Earth Restorer's Guide to Permaculture 2022

514 Pages·2022·97.282 MB·English

by  Rosemary Morrow

spine 23.5 mm
‘There has never been a more urgent need to revive
The revised and updated third edition of the author’s
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damaged ecosystems than now.’ O Earth User’s Guide to Permaculture
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United Nations, UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030) #GenerationRestoration
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With decades of hands-on teaching experience in a wide range of settings and E
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completely revised and updated edition of her classic text.
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The newly-titled Earth Restorer’s Guide to Permaculture covers essentials such as:

soils • water • microclimates • trees • seeds R
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design • pattern literacy • pests • weeds
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It also turns our minds to the growing global challenges to Earth’s air, soil and
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water, and shows us that by working in our local patch we can help restore our
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global ecosystems. E
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New in this edition are discussions on air quality, and chapters on marine
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permaculture, ‘crowded margins’ (including refugee camps), emerging economic

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models, livelihoods, and patterns in nature and their design applications.
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As always, Rob Allsop’s warm and accessible illustrations complement and I
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illuminate Rosemary Morrow’s practical approach.
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Earth Restorer’s Guide to Permaculture is a call to action. It entreats and empowers T
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us to launch a new restorative relationship with all life.

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The best gift to our world is a planet restored. e
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Melliodora Publishing supports the United Nations Decade
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on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030
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EARTH
RESTORER’S
GUIDE TO
m a c u l t u r e
p e r
ROSEMARY MORROW
ILLUSTRATED BY ROB ALLSOP
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I live in Katoomba, in the Blue Mountains of Australia on the cusp of two
Indigenous nations that never ceded the land: the Dharug and the Gundungurra.
And so, for each, I acknowledge the privilege of living on this land
and also offer you a welcome to this book in both languages:
Dharug Wotami N’allowah Mittigar
Hello, come in, sit down.
Gundungurra Yangoo borga-mandoo yaddunggee
For coming here today we thank you.
Yanama Budyari Gumada
To walk with good spirit through patience, respect and humility.
Earth Restorer’s Guide to Permaculture
Rosemary Morrow
Published by Melliodora Publishing 2022
First published in Australia in 1993 as Earth User’s Guide to Permaculture by Kangaroo Press
Earth User’s Guide to Permaculture Second edition by Kangaroo Press (2006); Permanent Publications (2010);
Melliodora Publishing (2015)
© Rosemary Morrow 2022
The moral rights of Rosemary Morrow to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted.
This book is copyright. Apart from fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under
the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced or transmitted by any process by any entity or person (including Google, Amazon
or similar organisations) without written permission from the publisher. Enquiries should be addressed to the publisher.
All reasonable efforts were taken to obtain permission to use copyright material reproduced in this book. In the event of any
omissions please contact the publisher.
Published by Melliodora Publishing
16 Fourteenth Street Hepburn
Victoria Australia 3461
melliodora.com
[email protected]
A catalogue record for this work is available from the National Library of Australia
Illustrations: Rob Allsop
Editing: Jessica Perini
Project management: Richard Telford and Beck Lowe
Cover design: Anne-Marie Reeves
Book design: Emma O’Dell
ISBN: 978-0-6488459-0-4
Printed in Australia by Southern Impact
Cover stock: FSC Silk White
Text stock: Precision Laser White
Fonts: Source Sans Pro and Verveine
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Contents
Foreword ................................................................................... vi
Introduction .............................................................................. viii
Part 1: Observing and appraising 1
1 Permaculture’s foundation: Ethics and principles ................................. 2
2 Ecology: Life’s networks ............................................................ 11
3 Global boundaries ................................................................... 25
4 Nature’s patterns .................................................................... 40
5 Read your land and make maps ................................................... 59
6 Develop your design methods ..................................................... 69
Part 2: Ecological literacy 83 
7 The wonder of water ................................................................ 84
8 Rural and environmental water ................................................... 104
9 Care of the oceans .................................................................. 125
10 Climates: Cycles of change ........................................................ 146
11 Microclimates: Places unobserved ............................................... 155
12 Soils: Living organisms ............................................................. 163
13 Forests and trees: Water moving over hills ...................................... 181
14 Windbreaks and special forests ................................................... 191
15 Our plant and seed heritage ....................................................... 201
Part 3: Applying permaculture design 213
16 Zone 0: How and where we live . .................................................. 214
17 Zone 1: Your kitchen garden ....................................................... 230
18 Zone 2: The food forest ............................................................. 243
19 Small animals in food forests ..................................................... 255
20 Zone 3: Farms . ...................................................................... 268
21 Zone 4: Harvest forests ............................................................. 282
22 Zone 5: Natural conservation forests ............................................. 292
23 Traditional and emerging cultures ............................................... 303
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Part 4: Adding resilience 317
24 Managing pests: IPM ............................................................... 318
25 Living with wildlife ................................................................. 334
26 Weeds: Guardians of the soil ...................................................... 340
27 Aquaculture: Water permaculture ................................................ 349
28 Manage waste ....................................................................... 361
29 Disaster preparation, endurance and recovery ................................. 368
Part 5: Applying design to societies 385
30 Bioregions: Belonging .............................................................. 386
31 Working together in organisations ............................................... 394
32 Rights, and access to land ......................................................... 402
33 The urban age: Cities and large towns ........................................... 409
34 Designing communities, villages and suburbs .................................. 424
35 Working on the edges .............................................................. 433
36 A just economy for all .............................................................. 446
37 Designing workplaces .............................................................. 464
38 Your future: Incomes and livelihoods ............................................ 473
Further resources ....................................................................... 486
Acknowledgements: Garden of gratitude ............................................ 492
Index ...................................................................................... 494
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Foreword
Rosemary Morrow’s third edition of Earth Restorer’s Guide to Permaculture is a vital book for our
times of climate catastrophes, biodiversity loss, species extinction, and food and water scarcity.
All these crises are rooted in human separation from nature and each other.
The monoculture of the mechanical mind has shaped industrial agriculture and the globalised
commodity production and distribution system.
By destroying the ecological web of life, the social web of community, and the ecology of our
body, including the ecology of the gut microbiome, the industrial globalised food system is at
the heart of the crisis of planetary health and the human health emergency.
Earth Restorer’s Guide shines the light on another path.
It reminds us that we are not separate from the Earth; indeed we are part of the Earth commu-
nity. Everything is interconnected – plants, trees and forests, seeds and soil, food and water.
The Earth can only be regenerated and restored in her interconnectedness. Restoring her, we
must act not just ‘with nature’, but ‘as nature’. We have to live with a deep consciousness that
we are Earth Beings. Earth care flows from that consciousness.
The ethic of Earth care is central to this book. And it must become the central ethic for living
on this Earth if we are to prevent the extinction of species, including our own. Through Earth
care we sow the seeds of life.
Importantly, Earth Restorer’s Guide takes a systems science approach that guides regeneration.
Mechanistic reductionism has guided the violent tools used in industrial agriculture that are
destroying the planet and our health. Systems thinking – in resonance with nature’s processes
and patterns – shows the path to regeneration.
The climate system cannot be addressed without regenerating biodiversity. The soil and the
atmosphere are interconnected through plants; the process of photosynthesis, their power to
transform carbon dioxide into carbohydrates, the molecules of life, and oxygen, our breath.
The atmosphere and biosphere are interconnected systems of Gaia, wedded through nutrition
and water cycles.
Food – the currency of life – is what connects us. Earth Restorer’s Guide shows we can transform
food production and consumption through food systems that reduce our carbon footprint,
while increasing biodiversity.
We can grow healthy food everywhere, in cities and in the neighbouring countryside. In this
way, we can heal the metabolic rift between the country and the city. And we can address the
issues leading to the metabolic disorders of the living organism Gaia, and the multiple meta-
bolic diseases that fuel today’s food-related chronic disease epidemic.
Sustainable cities can address climate change through shifting the food system to local, circu-
lar and renewable economies. These return nutrients and water to the Earth, give fair and just
incomes to small farmers, and provide healthy food to populations. Every rooftop and every
balcony, every lawn and even every parking lot can contribute to the real green transition.
In spite of its vital importance for human survival, biodiversity is being lost at an alarming rate,
as 200 species disappear daily with the spread of capital- and chemical-intensive industrial
agriculture. This monoculture-based system is the greatest driver of species extinction from
birds and bees, to forests (the Amazon), to soil organisms and vital biodiversity in our gut
flora. It is wiping out the diversity of crops we grow and eat, with the commodification of food
reducing cultivated crops to a dozen globally traded commodities. It is also one of the greatest
drivers of climate change.1
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We cannot address climate change, and its very real consequences, without recognising
the central role of the industrial and globalised food system, which contributes more than
50% to greenhouse gas emissions through deforestation, concentrated animal feeding
operations, plastics and aluminium packaging, long-distance transport and food waste.
We must create alternatives.
Earth Restorer’s Guide provides us with the ecological science and practices to regenerate
soil, water and biodiversity through cooperation and mutuality, through systems design,
not fragmented manipulation.
In this book, Rosemary Morrow shows how regenerating biodiversity is regenerating resilience.
Diversity and resilience grow through self-organisation and patterns of interconnectedness
between habitats and species, through the flow of materials, energy, food and water.
Trees, animals, and crops all need each other and can support each other in an economy of
permanence, which is an economy of non-violence. Working with the Earth and her biodiversity
provides solutions to the multiple crises we face.
By respecting all life and co-creating with the Earth and her complex, interconnected, living
processes we can sow the seeds of another future.
Earth Restorer’s Guide shows you the way to a liveable future based on
Earth care
People care
Fair share.

Dr Vandana Shiva

Notes
1 ‘The Law of the Seed’, Navdanya International, navdanyainternational.org/publications/the-law-of-the-seed;
‘Pledge for Poison-free Food and Farming 2030’, Navdanya International, navdanyainternational.org/publications/
pledge-for-poison-free-food-and-farming.
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Introduction
I stand on the land between the Tigris and Euph- Is permaculture up to the challenges of a truly
rates Rivers, known as the Fertile Crescent. It’s a global future? What will those challenges be?
place that was once so productive that nomadic
tribes could settle, and store surplus food, with the
leisure to develop the myriad of crafts, technology Measured by almost any criteria, permaculture
and arts that brought us here today. The ancient has been a success. Born in Tasmania, Australia,
poets used to write of green glades, fresh air, run- it spread quietly as a global people’s movement
ning water and abundant fruits. Willows overhung by teachers who taught teachers who taught
deep pools, fish swam in permanent rivers and other teachers. They travelled to India, Chile,
birds sang. Ethiopia, South Africa, Malawi, Bangladesh and
Lost in my mind’s images, I open my eyes to the further. However, until recently, it remained mainly
reality. Before me is a flat dusty land, a refugee Europeans who passed on the teaching culture.
camp of 50,000 people, and there’s not a tree in Though valuable, their teaching processes and
sight. Shifting sands cover everything. The climate content were not responsive, self-questioning,
here vacillates between extremes of minus 10 or flexible enough to embrace traditional, non-
Celsius in Winter and an unbearable 50 degrees in European customs and leadership.
Summer. The Tigris, a wide, tired river, now barely Academies and institutes were set up to ensure
flows to the sea due to the failure of snow melt ‘quality control’ from one of the recognised
to feed it. Here I am in the once Fertile Crescent, models. These opened the permaculture doors,
helping people grow food under incredibly and globally, students with vision seized it.
difficult conditions. This model generally persisted and the reciprocity
This ancient land and its present-day challenges is was slight, if it existed at all. Then change started
just one of many crying out for permaculture solu- coming fast, first with the web, then a global
tions. For too long permaculture has been seen by pandemic and simultaneously a movement from
too many as a simple system for creating organic emerging nations saying ‘thank you for permacul-
gardens. This book is a recognition, and an asser- ture, but it is based in colonial structures and we
tion, that it can, and indeed must be, so much more. can do better here’. And they have. Permaculturists
This year marks the start of the United Nations from emerging nations – among them Sarah
Decade on Ecosystem Restoration;1 a critical period Queblatin and Precious Phiri – are leading the way.2
for preventing, halting and reversing the degrada- Permaculture must be critiqued and updated from
tion of ecosystems around the world. In recogni- an emerging nation perspective to remain relevant
tion, this book’s title has changed from Earth User’s or, it will linger, mainly for English speaking people
Guide to Permaculture to Earth Restorer’s Guide of mostly western cultures. This edition demon-
to Permaculture. Permaculturists are uniquely strates a noticeable shift to include traditions, tech-
equipped with many tools and 40-years of nologies and perspectives of emerging nations.
evidence-based practice to lead the movement.
This is not just a third edition, but a thoroughly
Since the last edition we have witnessed the tragic, revised and expanded book. I have added 11 new
accelerating deterioration of the natural world. chapters. The rest has been updated and interro-
Political solutions are mostly stuck in a past age or gated and includes relevant traditional and global
are deliberately obstructive. Permaculture must examples.
work with the best global knowledge and practices.
We include more social and economic examples
We can no longer stay apart and say we are ‘setting
to balance the environmental focus. However the
up a parallel alternative’. We must work together
environment, as Bill Mollison and David Holmgren
with other agencies.
explained, always remains primary.
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I have been challenged, in teaching war victims • The overwhelming importance and need for
and others imperilled by invasion and forced mass marine permaculture principles, literacy and
migration, to assess permaculture’s ability to meet guidelines must be applied by all designers.
the needs of a fast changing future in vastly differ- Design approaches must expand to oceans.
ent situations and cultures. I have attempted to address such issues in
Forty years of global permaculture experience, this edition.
comparisons and thinking have thrown up import- The last five or so years have been marked by
ant questions of its adequacy and scope such as: mass movements, social swarming,4 economic
• The need to include global examples to cater for inequities, militarisation and social surveillance
the unpredictability of climate change3 impacts and a pandemic. We live in times when many of
and draw on traditional cultural knowledge such our social systems are unstable, with technology
as that of water management in the Middle East, accelerating life faster than we can adapt to it,
or water agriculture in Iraq and Bangladesh. and inequities are growing. What does social
• The urgent need to include two-thirds or more permaculture have to offer? Some new issues have
of the world’s population in the global perma- appeared, or become much more apparent:
culture syllabus, and examples to be relevant • Global companies use public resources but are
to those without land, and living in dense not part of society or our local communities. How
settlements. can we set up bioregional alternatives to them?
• Where appropriate, work with the United Nations • We need strategies to elaborate on the connec-
Sustainable Development Goals and the plane- tions between the war economy and climate
tary boundaries. change; these include awareness and concern
• We need to come to terms and provide strategies about weapons in space. We must highlight
for ‘wicked problems’ such as melting ice packs, the themes of ‘demilitarise to decarbonise’ and
cities which will be submerged this century, and ‘weapons to windmills’.
the loss of delta food baskets to sea rise. • We must embrace the decolonisation of our
• Permaculture has always prioritised relation- thinking and community structures (see Sarah
ships with nature, grounded in kinship and Queblatin’s Principle 0).
based on reciprocity. This has drifted somewhat • We need to measure capital in meaningful ways,
in the last decades and needs to return to the beyond financial capital. Measuring values in
first consideration: What is the impact on the monetary terms is basically nothing else than
environment? transferring/converting them into a form of
• Permaculture must include disaster risks, financial capital.
recovery and improved understanding in every • Ethical money, the importance of social enter-
design including cascading disasters and other prises, divestment from companies and growing
impacts, such as pandemics and include the co-operatives give us personal and community
Sendai Framework. solutions to develop bioregional strength.
• Permaculture needs to demonstrate more and • New concepts show us how to use money, and
varied pathways to livelihoods. meet our needs without money. We are assisted
• Water must encompass more than farmland and by concepts from doughnut economics, to zero
domestic water. To be relevant, our restoration growth. Some radical solutions may be needed
work must include wetlands, recharging aquifers, for the uncertain future. The concepts of right
restoring rivers, lakes, ponds and bores. livelihood, right to access land, land ethics are
still mainstream in social permaculture.
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