May the forces be with you

In last edition’s article on permaculture’s energy-efficient planning, we looked at the concept of zone planning, which was concerned with managing energies within our systems.

This article will explore the second aspect of energy-efficient planning, termed sector planning, which is concerned with elements and forces of nature that come from outside our systems and pass through them.

Nature’s forces can be a mix of good and bad and in permaculture sector planning we seek to harness the positive while minimising the negative through careful planning and clever ecological design, rather than expending valuable resources or energy to manage them.

TAMING WILD NATURE

In permaculture sector planning the first thing we need to do is identify which forces of nature interact with our sites, the directions they come