Earth User's Guide to Permaculture

Rating:
Summary: Great ideas to put principles into practice
Review: Morrow and Allsop offer an amusingly illustrated and practical response to other intellectually overwhelming tomes available on permaculture (e.g. Bill Mollison's "Designer's Manual"). For those readers who want an easy-to-follow and get-to-the-point manual for designing their property according to permaculture principles, this book is it.

The author breaks down the complex material in simple layered concepts, building each successive chapter on the previous, and gives the reader practical "labs" to help apply the concepts--even if you are just dreaming about property and don't own any yet.

About 1/3 of the book is foundational material on earth science: air, weather, soil, plants, etc. Starting with the basics, like observation and note taking, the author guides us step by step to help us understand the macro (the earth) and the micro (our backyard) world around us. The next 1/3 of the book helps you to start planning your own property based on the principles uncovered in the first 1/3. Photos and cartoon-like illustrations help flesh out the concepts.

My only complaint is that the latter chapters are too brief. The author does such a good example of explaining the material in the first 1/3 of the book that I was disappointed to find the material lacking on how to build a natural forest. The reader will need additional books (like Patrick Whitefield's How to make a Forest Garden) to fill in where the author is sparse here.

Despite what a previous reviewer has written, this book is neither preachy nor impractical. The notion to get rid of your car was briefly suggested in one place, about 3/4 ways through the book, and certainly not presented as an imperative--merely one idea among many possible solutions to pollution.

To suggest that the author expects us to emulate Vietnamese poverty is misleading and unfair. The author presents several excellent agricultural examples currently employed in Vietnam--if good examples of permaculture exist there, why not use them to illustrate your point? The author in no way implies that we must adopt the Vietnamese lifestyle as a whole to fullfill the permaculture ideal. Rather, we can take their best examples and adapt them to our own situation.

By the way, as a policitally conservative reader (to the "right"), I can confidently say the tone of the book is NOT leftist. Sound ecological principles are not "leftist". Good stewardship of the earth is a biblical and conservative notion.

Anyway, this is a fun, informative book, with LOTS of practical ideas that have inspired me and enlightened my dreams for my own permaculture homestead.

Rating:
Summary: Great ideas to put principles into practice
Review: Rosemary Morrow lives in Eastern Australia and has taught permaculture design in India, Africa, Thailand and Cambodia. As a result of her considerable skill and experience she has written a first-rate, practical and informative guide to sustainable living. Permaculture was first developed by Bill Mollison and Dvid Holmgren and has since spread exponentially around the world. This book is a very practical guide to help you get started in your locality. While it has an Australian perspective, I have found the vast majority of it entirely applicable or easily adaptable to a Northern hemisphere temperate context. I bought The Earth User's Guide to Permaculture because I wanted to learn about Permaculture but was intimidated by the price and sheer weight of the key textbook, Permaculture: A Designer's Manual, by Mollison. I was also unable to participate in a hands-on design course at the time due to work and family committments. What I found was inspiring. I have since completed the design certificate and am now teaching a university course in environmental ethics. There are several strengths to the Earth User's Guide. First, there are plenty of excellent illustrations by Rob Allsop, so you can see as well as read about the process and principles of permaculture design. The twenty well-chosen colour photographs compliment these. Secondly, the book focusses on two different real-life examples, a small suburban house and an eighty acre farm. Seeing permaculture in action in real places is very helpful. Third, the book avoids duplicating material that can be found elsewhere and instead focusses on the practical. There are project ideas here that could take a morning or a lifetime to complete. As Rosemary Morrow writes in the preface, 'start now and let your life be enriched'.

Rating:
Summary: Great starting place
Review: We bought this book because we had heard bits of information about permaculture and we didn't want to spend heaps of money learning about something which might not interest us.

Earth User's Guide to Permaculture has inspired us to get into permaculture in a big way. The information presented gives enough in the way of ideas to get the brain ticking over and to think how it can be applied in your own situation. We will buy another, more detailed book than this one, but this was perfect as an introduction to permaculture and to guide us in the direction we need to go.

I'd recommend this book to anyone with an interest in permaculture who isn't sure if it's for them. There's enough to get you thinking and to let you know if permaculture is for you.

Rating:
Summary: Permaculture, its own worst enemy
Review: What a pity that a science which has as much to offer as permaculture should be so degraded by the radicalism of some of its proponents as to make it unsaleable to the mainstream of potential users, who will be turned away by its political philosophy. This book, while it offers some good ideas about design and planning, is tinged throughout by its greenie fringe. eg. what is the solution to weeds caused by vehicular pollution? Get rid of your car!

I bought this book to learn about sustainable agricultural practice, but found myself enmeshed in a diatribe of leftist sentiment. For those of us who do not wish to wear biodegradable clothes, or who do not believe that corporate profits are the result of greedy and unethical conspiracies, it is too tempting to disregard the entire subject of permaculture.

The proponents of this science need to accept that the majority of those citizens of the planet who have become accustomed to living in personal circumstances better than that of the "third world" are not going to go back to that lifestyle. While it might be a romantic ideal for some to live like a Vietnamese villager, not all would want to accept the poverty, short life expectancy and high infant mortality, to mention just three factors, which brand that country "third world". Permaculturists should abandon their politics and concentrate on promoting their science.