David Holmgren
Encyclopedia
David Holmgren is an ecologist
, ecological design engineer
and writer. He is known as one of the co-originators of the permaculture
concept with Bill Mollison
.
. He studied at the College of Advanced Education
in Hobart
, Tasmania
, where in 1974 he met Bill Mollison
, who was then a lecturer at the University of Tasmania
. The two found they shared a strong interest in the relationship between human and natural systems. Their wide-ranging conversations and gardening experiences encouraged Holmgren to write the manuscript that was to be published in 1978 as Permaculture One.
The book was a mixture of insights relating to agriculture
, landscape architecture
and ecology. The relationships between these disciplines were elaborated into a novel design system termed permaculture. Although the title clearly owes something to Russell Smith's Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture (first published 1929), Holmgren's chief theoretical inspiration was the energy dynamics of American ecologist Howard T. Odum
(Environment, Power and Society, 1971). The same book was promoted by David M. Scienceman
as a platform for a scientific political party.
According to Holmgren,
Permaculture One was far more successful than anticipated, as it seemed to meet a need of the emerging environmentalist counterculture looking for something positive and substantial to align with. It was published in five languages, but is now out of print and of mainly historical value, having been superseded and refined in later works.
While Bill Mollison travelled the world teaching and promoting permaculture, Holmgren was more circumspect about the potential of permaculture to live up to the promises sometimes made about it. He concentrated his efforts on testing and refining his brainchild, first on his mother's property in southern New South Wales (Permaculture in the Bush, 1985; 1993), then at his own property, Melliodora, Hepburn Permaculture Gardens, at Hepburn Springs, Victoria
,
which he developed with his partner, Su Dennett (Melliodora, Hepburn Permaculture Gardens - Ten Years of Sustainable Living, 1996a; Payne, 2003).
Since 1983 Holmgren has acted through his company Holmgren Design Services as consultant for a large number of projects, examples of which can be found in the report Trees on Treeless Plains: Revegetation Manual for the Volcanic Landscapes of Central Victoria (1994).
Holmgren started teaching on permaculture design courses in 1991 and from 1993 taught PDCs at his Hepburn home.
A major project was the Fryers Forest
eco-village, which aimed to create a model of sustainable housing and financially viable sustainable forest management, on a site near Castlemaine, Victoria
.
, who died two months before its publication, and it owes much to Odum's vision of a world in energy transition (Odum and Odum, 2001).
'Principles and Pathways ' offers twelve key permaculture design principles, each explained in separate chapters. This fills a conceptual gap that has been evident from permaculture's inception. It is likely to be seen as a major landmark in the permaculture literature, especially as the seminal work, Bill Mollison's Permaculture: A Designer's Manual (1988) was published fifteen years previously and has never been revised.
Holmgren has had a long-standing interest in the use of non-native
'invasive' plants, for food and fibre
, but more controversially for ecological restoration and 'ecosynthesis
'. This interest in recombinant ecosystems or 'weedscapes' is partly inspired by a 1979 visit to New Zealand and interactions with New Zealand ecologist Haikai Tane (1995).
Holmgren's refusal to toe the majority line
on introduced and invasive species
has led to some ill-informed criticism of permaculture in a debate which is very much alive in the Australian environmental movement
. His recent comments on the value of willow (Salix albaXfragilis) in a Victorian stream corridor
for beneficial sediment and phosphorus capture can be construed as 'heretical' in relation to official policy. Holmgren goes so far as to comment, 'The science of ecology
provided the overwhelming evidence that everything is connected, so it is a great irony that conservation biology
is now dominated by an orthodoxy that is blind to ecosynthesis
as nature's way of weaving a new tapestry of life.' Holmgren has been developing these and other ideas into a new book, provisionally entitled 'Weeds or Wild Nature?' since publishing and article in the Permaculture International Journal in 1997.
, is near Castlemaine
, in Central Victoria, Australia
. Central features of the village design are, the integration of domestic forestry with selective thinning for fire-safety (The harvested wood provides energy for domestic wood stoves), and the integration of the Keyline Design
system of water storage and transfer with the Village road network and residential home site location. The water keyline storage system was the main design instrument for the regeneration of a landscape degraded by over 50 years of gold mining.
Despite the claims that permaculture provides sustainable solutions, there is currently no data available on the sustainability of the Fryers Forest
settlement. Given the significance of water availability to the overall design, water levels may be one indicator of the success of the project. Due to an extremely long drought, (1994 to 2009) the water levels in dams became very low. However, rainwater supply to the community (via tanks catching roof run-off) was excellent and by early 2011 all dam systems were full to overflowing again.
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
, ecological design engineer
Ecological engineering
Ecological engineering is an emerging study of integrating ecology and engineering, concerned with the design, monitoring and construction of ecosystems...
and writer. He is known as one of the co-originators of the permaculture
Permaculture
Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that is modeled on the relationships found in nature. It is based on the ecology of how things interrelate rather than on the strictly biological concerns that form the foundation of modern agriculture...
concept with Bill Mollison
Bill Mollison
Bruce Charles 'Bill' Mollison is a researcher, author, scientist, teacher and naturalist. He is considered to be the 'father of permaculture', an integrated system of design, co-developed with David Holmgren, that encompasses not only agriculture, horticulture, architecture and ecology, but also...
.
Life and work
Holmgren was born in the state of Western AustraliaWestern Australia
Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...
. He studied at the College of Advanced Education
College of Advanced Education
The College of Advanced Education was a class of Australian tertiary education institution that existed from 1967 until the early 1990s. They ranked below universities, but above Colleges of Technical and Further Education which offer trade qualification...
in Hobart
Hobart
Hobart is the state capital and most populous city of the Australian island state of Tasmania. Founded in 1804 as a penal colony,Hobart is Australia's second oldest capital city after Sydney. In 2009, the city had a greater area population of approximately 212,019. A resident of Hobart is known as...
, Tasmania
Tasmania
Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...
, where in 1974 he met Bill Mollison
Bill Mollison
Bruce Charles 'Bill' Mollison is a researcher, author, scientist, teacher and naturalist. He is considered to be the 'father of permaculture', an integrated system of design, co-developed with David Holmgren, that encompasses not only agriculture, horticulture, architecture and ecology, but also...
, who was then a lecturer at the University of Tasmania
University of Tasmania
The University of Tasmania is a medium-sized public Australian university based in Tasmania, Australia. Officially founded on 1 January 1890, it was the fourth university to be established in nineteenth-century Australia...
. The two found they shared a strong interest in the relationship between human and natural systems. Their wide-ranging conversations and gardening experiences encouraged Holmgren to write the manuscript that was to be published in 1978 as Permaculture One.
- 'I wrote the manuscript, which was based partly on our constant discussions and on our practical working together in the garden and on our visits to other sites in Tasmania... I used this manuscript as my primary reference for my thesis, which I submitted and was passed in 1976.'
The book was a mixture of insights relating to agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
, landscape architecture
Landscape architecture
Landscape architecture is the design of outdoor and public spaces to achieve environmental, socio-behavioral, or aesthetic outcomes. It involves the systematic investigation of existing social, ecological, and geological conditions and processes in the landscape, and the design of interventions...
and ecology. The relationships between these disciplines were elaborated into a novel design system termed permaculture. Although the title clearly owes something to Russell Smith's Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture (first published 1929), Holmgren's chief theoretical inspiration was the energy dynamics of American ecologist Howard T. Odum
Howard T. Odum
Howard Thomas Odum was an American ecologist...
(Environment, Power and Society, 1971). The same book was promoted by David M. Scienceman
David M. Scienceman
Dr David M. Scienceman is an Australian scientist; he changed his name from David Slade by deed poll in 1972.Dr Scienceman has a mathematics and physics degree and gained his PhD from the chemical engineering department at Sydney University on a scholarship from the Australian Atomic Energy...
as a platform for a scientific political party.
According to Holmgren,
- 'The word permaculture was coined by Bill Mollison and myself in the mid-1970s to describe an "integrated, evolving system of perennial or self-perpetuating plant and animal species useful to man". A more current definition of permaculture, which reflects the expansion of focus implicit in Permaculture One, is "Consciously designed landscapes which mimic the patterns and relationships found in nature, while yielding an abundance of food, fibre and energy for provision of local needs". People, their buildings and the ways they organise themselves are central to permaculture. Thus the permaculture vision of permanent (sustainable) agriculture has evolved into one of permanent (sustainable) culture.'
Permaculture One was far more successful than anticipated, as it seemed to meet a need of the emerging environmentalist counterculture looking for something positive and substantial to align with. It was published in five languages, but is now out of print and of mainly historical value, having been superseded and refined in later works.
While Bill Mollison travelled the world teaching and promoting permaculture, Holmgren was more circumspect about the potential of permaculture to live up to the promises sometimes made about it. He concentrated his efforts on testing and refining his brainchild, first on his mother's property in southern New South Wales (Permaculture in the Bush, 1985; 1993), then at his own property, Melliodora, Hepburn Permaculture Gardens, at Hepburn Springs, Victoria
Hepburn Springs, Victoria
Hepburn Springs is a resort town located in the middle of the largest concentration of mineral springs in Australia. It is in Victoria, 48 km northeast of Ballarat. At the 2006 census, Hepburn Springs had a population of 601 and Hepburn had a population of 375. Total population of...
,
which he developed with his partner, Su Dennett (Melliodora, Hepburn Permaculture Gardens - Ten Years of Sustainable Living, 1996a; Payne, 2003).
Since 1983 Holmgren has acted through his company Holmgren Design Services as consultant for a large number of projects, examples of which can be found in the report Trees on Treeless Plains: Revegetation Manual for the Volcanic Landscapes of Central Victoria (1994).
Holmgren started teaching on permaculture design courses in 1991 and from 1993 taught PDCs at his Hepburn home.
A major project was the Fryers Forest
Fryers Forest
Fryers Forest is an eco-village in a forest setting in central Victoria, Australia. It features excellent planning, good examples of solar passive houses and sustainable management of native bushland systems...
eco-village, which aimed to create a model of sustainable housing and financially viable sustainable forest management, on a site near Castlemaine, Victoria
Castlemaine, Victoria
Castlemaine is a city in Victoria, Australia, in the Goldfields region of Victoria about 120 kilometres northwest by road from Melbourne, and about 40 kilometres from the major provincial centre of Bendigo. It is the administrative and economic centre of the Shire of Mount Alexander. The...
.
Permaculture: Principles and Pathways beyond Sustainability
The publication in December 2002 of a new major work on permaculture, saw a deeper and more accessible systematization of the principles of permaculture refined by Holmgren over more than 25 years of practice. The book, Permaculture: Principles and Pathways beyond Sustainability (2002a), is dedicated to Howard T. OdumHoward T. Odum
Howard Thomas Odum was an American ecologist...
, who died two months before its publication, and it owes much to Odum's vision of a world in energy transition (Odum and Odum, 2001).
'Principles and Pathways ' offers twelve key permaculture design principles, each explained in separate chapters. This fills a conceptual gap that has been evident from permaculture's inception. It is likely to be seen as a major landmark in the permaculture literature, especially as the seminal work, Bill Mollison's Permaculture: A Designer's Manual (1988) was published fifteen years previously and has never been revised.
Holmgren has had a long-standing interest in the use of non-native
Introduced species
An introduced species — or neozoon, alien, exotic, non-indigenous, or non-native species, or simply an introduction, is a species living outside its indigenous or native distributional range, and has arrived in an ecosystem or plant community by human activity, either deliberate or accidental...
'invasive' plants, for food and fibre
Fiber crop
Fiber crops are field crops grown for their fibers, which are traditionally used to make paper, cloth, or rope. The fibers may be chemically modified, like in viscose or cellophane...
, but more controversially for ecological restoration and 'ecosynthesis
Ecosynthesis
Ecosynthesis is a term used to describe the use of introduced species to fill niches in a disrupted environment, with the aim of increasing the speed of ecological restoration. This decreases the amount of physical damage done in a disrupted landscape....
'. This interest in recombinant ecosystems or 'weedscapes' is partly inspired by a 1979 visit to New Zealand and interactions with New Zealand ecologist Haikai Tane (1995).
Holmgren's refusal to toe the majority line
Toe the line
"Toe the line" is an idiomatic expression meaning to conform to a rule or a standard.The expression has disputed origins. It is commonly thought that its origins lie in the British House of Commons where sword-strapped members were instructed to stand behind lines that were two sword-lengths apart...
on introduced and invasive species
Invasive species
"Invasive species", or invasive exotics, is a nomenclature term and categorization phrase used for flora and fauna, and for specific restoration-preservation processes in native habitats, with several definitions....
has led to some ill-informed criticism of permaculture in a debate which is very much alive in the Australian environmental movement
Environmental Movement in Australia
Beginning as a conservation movement, the environmental movement in Australia was the first in the world to become a political movement and Australia was home to the world's first Green Party....
. His recent comments on the value of willow (Salix albaXfragilis) in a Victorian stream corridor
Stream restoration
Stream restoration or river restoration, sometimes called river reclamation in the UK, describes a set of activities that help improve the environmental health of a river or stream. Improved health may be indicated by expanded habitat for diverse species and reduced stream bank erosion...
for beneficial sediment and phosphorus capture can be construed as 'heretical' in relation to official policy. Holmgren goes so far as to comment, 'The science of ecology
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
provided the overwhelming evidence that everything is connected, so it is a great irony that conservation biology
Conservation biology
Conservation biology is the scientific study of the nature and status of Earth's biodiversity with the aim of protecting species, their habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction...
is now dominated by an orthodoxy that is blind to ecosynthesis
Ecosynthesis
Ecosynthesis is a term used to describe the use of introduced species to fill niches in a disrupted environment, with the aim of increasing the speed of ecological restoration. This decreases the amount of physical damage done in a disrupted landscape....
as nature's way of weaving a new tapestry of life.' Holmgren has been developing these and other ideas into a new book, provisionally entitled 'Weeds or Wild Nature?' since publishing and article in the Permaculture International Journal in 1997.
The acid test
Holmgren's development of a rural settlement is perhaps his most significant design and test of his Permaculture principles. The settlement, known as the Fryer's Forest EcovillageFryers Forest
Fryers Forest is an eco-village in a forest setting in central Victoria, Australia. It features excellent planning, good examples of solar passive houses and sustainable management of native bushland systems...
, is near Castlemaine
Castlemaine, Victoria
Castlemaine is a city in Victoria, Australia, in the Goldfields region of Victoria about 120 kilometres northwest by road from Melbourne, and about 40 kilometres from the major provincial centre of Bendigo. It is the administrative and economic centre of the Shire of Mount Alexander. The...
, in Central Victoria, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. Central features of the village design are, the integration of domestic forestry with selective thinning for fire-safety (The harvested wood provides energy for domestic wood stoves), and the integration of the Keyline Design
Keyline Design
Keyline design is a technique for maximizing beneficial use of water resources of a piece of land. The Keyline refers to a specific topographic feature linked to water flow...
system of water storage and transfer with the Village road network and residential home site location. The water keyline storage system was the main design instrument for the regeneration of a landscape degraded by over 50 years of gold mining.
Despite the claims that permaculture provides sustainable solutions, there is currently no data available on the sustainability of the Fryers Forest
Fryers Forest
Fryers Forest is an eco-village in a forest setting in central Victoria, Australia. It features excellent planning, good examples of solar passive houses and sustainable management of native bushland systems...
settlement. Given the significance of water availability to the overall design, water levels may be one indicator of the success of the project. Due to an extremely long drought, (1994 to 2009) the water levels in dams became very low. However, rainwater supply to the community (via tanks catching roof run-off) was excellent and by early 2011 all dam systems were full to overflowing again.
External links
- http://www.holmgren.com.au
- Future Scenarios: Mapping the Cultural Implications of Peak Oil and Climate Change
- Peak Oil and Permaculture: David Holmgren on Energy Descent
- Peak Oil and Permaculture: David Holmgren Video
- David Holmgren speaks with GPM's Julian Darley
- Retrofitting the Suburbs for Sustainability
- Permaculture principles
- http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/backyard-answer-to-energy-crisis/2008/03/18/1205602385256.htmlDavid Holmgren tells Fran MolloyFran MolloyFran Molloy is an Australian freelance journalist and author, and founder of the Freeline forum for independent journalists in Australia. She is also a freelance member of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance...
of Sydney Morning Herald about ‘retrofitting the suburbs’ for food production]