The idea
After I finished my Permaculture design course in the autumn of 2011, I was full of ideas as one would expect, apart from the obvious thoughts of how I intended to apply it to my allotment plots and our back garden there was also another thought that constantly kept popping up in my mind. As permaculture design is a system with lots of integrated component parts, it dawned on me that the idea of a permaculture design software tool would seem like something that could be developed.
Breathing life into the idea
During the winter of late 2011 and into 2012 I kept on thinking of what this possible software might look like, the idea of keeping it simple was at the forefront of my thoughts so that people of all ages could easily access and utilise such a tool. On the 8th of January I was sat chatting and drinking tea in our kitchen with Boyd Lee, who, along with his partner Vicky Urmston run and coordinate Transition Towns Bolton. Then it dawned on me that Boyd had mentioned in a much earlier conversation that he was a software designer by trade and was also practiced permaculture on his allotment plot, I put the idea of the software to Boyd, he was immediately interested and we set about writing and drawing our ideas of a large pad. Boyd had already designed some interesting software that enabled haulage companies to ensure that their vehicles were not carrying empty loads on the return portion of their delivery rotas, thus saving fuel usage. Boyd saw the permaculture software as a way of him doing a lot more in terms of promoting sound ecological practices.
I have since contacted Martin Crawford the permaculture practitioner, author, and director of the Agro forestry research trust, Martin has agreed to allow us to use his tables of reference from his permaculture publications in order to house our software tool with information about plants and trees. I have also contacted Patrick Whitefield the permaculture tutor and author of the seminal ‘Earth repair manual’ permaculture book has also shown an interest in the software, as a possible accompaniment to his online PDC courses. We are hoping the tool will be completely finished and up and running in the late summer/early autumn of this year.
For a permanent culture
The development of a multifunctional permaculture software tool has a number of attributes that it can contribute towards the development of a permanent culture, firstly, the software will enable users to access all sorts of information for their design simply by clicking on the tabs that will be situated around the main screen area, this makes the job of design less intensive in terms of paper usage and having to go through dozens of books to find the relevant information, whilst at the same time making permaculture more accessible. The software also links other permaculture practitioners in the area and the types of work that they are doing, this will promote the sharing of knowledge and interaction, and possibly new friend ships as people seek out others within their locale who are working on similar projects.
Article Author: Steve Jones
Fantastic idea and good for you for following through with it. You’ll have to be careful to not make it too focused on ready-made solutions that people may erroneously pull together, but I think the potential is awesome.
thanks Phil, we are designing it so anyone from a 15 year old to an advanced practioner can use it, will keep you updated with how it is going. cheers Steve
Sounds promising. I look forward to seeing your product. One of the biggest frustration points for us PDC newbies is not knowing which plants to select and how to guild them.
Sounds like your ideas will really help once implemented.
THanks Ryan, will keep you updated with its progress, cheers Steve
I would very much love to see such a software come together, I believe it could greatly accelerate the pace at which permaculture spreads…I assume you know there are others working in similar directions and it seems a project like that asks for collaboration of a number of great minds to get it right…here’s a good overview of what’s needed and who’s taking steps in that direction: http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Open_source_software_for_permaculture. Enjoy everything!
I am very interested in this.
I am having an awfully difficult time putting the principles of permaculture into practical use.
mainly, I need a database of plant species that has entries for things like height, growing season / climate tolerance, water consumption, root depth, natural pests, natural “friends” (i.e. does it harbor any defensive species), and so on, in order to construct guilds.
I imagine that the collection of this data will be the difficult part; the software to use it would almost be trivial. Maybe there’s an existing (public domain?) archive that contains this data.
Thanks for your hard effort!
Hi Brian,
It is important that it could be collaborative, just have the software available with the squares to fill out by people!
That´s an idea, like a database wiki
Any idea about how to persue it?
cheers
Hi Steve!
Things look pretty promising in your software description. Dou you have any update to share about its development?
Thanks
m
Hi,
Also want to know how is the project going….
greetings
Hi there Irene
I,m afraid its going quite slowly at the moment, the main person who has been designing it is quite busy designing other software, he needs to do this other work to pay his bills, but we are hoping to restart the work in March.
best wishes Steve
Hi Steve,
Thanks for your response, how are you doing?
I know how slow things get when you have to dedicate to gain some conventional money :S
hope the project is still alive
🙂
Hope this is ready soon, very important and needed to promote the values of Permaculture. Sure make the job of designing easier and more professional for those of us trying to get more folks on board.
Yes! We are really looking for this too. Other garden design tools are lacking in the plants database. Please let me know if you have any update about this!
Any way to source some funding? This would be a worthwhile project for many people. I bet you could hook it onto a non-profit and get some grants.
Hi, I’m planning, along with some people, a Permaculture Software that can be used as a Game, an Educational Tool and as a Design Tool the borders of those are not clear (probably never will).
The plan for now is to achieve an early prototype, interesting enough to create a kickstarter (or similar) to raise some funds to hire people to implement it (so as to have something usable after 1 year instead of 10 ;).
Anyway most of us see the project as something to the community and to raise awareness so (still up to debate) an open source project makes sense as that would allow not only for anyone to collaborate but eventually someone forks the project into other tools or ideas.
How could this integrate with the “Synergy” project? is it still alive? 🙂
Screenshot of a very early version – just a teaser:
http://ricardo.ptws.pt/permagame0.01.png
cheers
Hi Ricardo, I want to keep posted on what you are doing.
It is important an open source project, AND a collaborative project … funding, always an issue, good that we have crowdfunding now!
cheers
Hey Guys,
I’m wondering about how is the software development going.
Will appreciate any news!
Thanks.
Hi,
I’ve only just read you blog, wondered how the project was going. I was looking for an app for mapping, measuring a new site we will be creating forest garden, permaculture small holding. I’m programmer also and was thinking of creating a permaculture android app along similar lines i think to your software, so interested in how it was going.
cheers
Kate
Hi Kate,
I would like to keep posted on your project too!
have a nice day,
🙂
This idea sounds very cool. Was it ever launched? Couldn’t find anything. Thanks 🙂