Celebrating Earth Day every day with Permaculture
By Naomi Canaan
Green Party of New York State

This trophy home in Sandgate, Vermont is a prime example of why Permaculture is important. Photo by David Doonan

Earth Day began humbly in 1969 with a proclamation passed in San Francisco, California, to celebrate Earth's life and beauty and to alert the human inhabitants of the planet of the need for preserving and renewing the threatened ecological balances upon which all life depends.

Celebrated at the time of the Spring Equinox, Earth Day has grown in worldwide proportions. Over the past thirty years it has focused on green ecosystems, environmental issues and a unique project encompassing innovative techniques involved in the study and implementation of Permaculture.

Permaculture is a term coined by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in Australia in the 1970s. It is a combination of the words permanent and agriculture or culture. Permaculture is the harmonious, efficient, synergistic, and sustainable relationships between human residences. It involves local climates, landscape, animals, soil, water and plants. The object is to creatively use the resources available in any given area and respond to the changes that have happened there, or are about to happen, and find a plan everyday people can relate to. These plans include the use of edible food, landscaping, composting, tree planting, and fauna. It takes into consideration the selection of indigenous and specialized flora to revitalize and reconstitute barren land or make a community ecologically vital. Some plans are as simple as planting a few berry bushes to attach butterflies, while other plans are intricate and can include: wetland formation for passive waste disposal systems, redesigning the landscape, and redirecting and redistributing the water run off system of a whole town.

Permaculture is the epitome of the Green Party's environmental land-use view of ecological sustainability. There are many regional Permaculture groups across the United States, and abroad.

For information on Permaculture go to: www.permacultureactivist.net 

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