In recent times "Being Green" has come to include a myriad different individual strategies and techniques for living lighter on the earth.

Permaculture is a "whole systems" view and design system that connects the dots.

Permaculture shows us WHY (refusing), reducing, reusing, (repairing), and recycling, growing food, composting, buying local, supporting "alternative" energy and transportation, cooperative economies, etc. all make sense; and it shows us HOW these things fit together to form the bigger picture.

LEARNING Permaculture means learning how to recognize the patterns of ecological health found in nature, and PRACTICING permaculture (or "permaculture design") means learning how to apply the patterns to your life and surroundings, bringing them into alignment with ecological principles and creating systems that provide abundance and surplus.

From www.permaculture.org.au
Permaculture (permanent agriculture) is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter, and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way. Without permanent agriculture there is no possibility of a stable social order.

Permaculture design is a system of assembling conceptual, material, and strategic components in a pattern which functions to benefit life in all its forms.

The philosophy behind permaculture is one of working with, rather than against, nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless action; of looking at systems in all their functions, rather than asking only one yield of them; and allowing systems to demonstrate their own evolutions.