Episode
Ep. 232: David Holmgren on Permaculture's Origins & Building Resilient Households
- Podcast
- Plant Cunning Podcast
- Published
- May 27, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 4786
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Summary
Get your tickets for the Plant Cunning Conference here: Plant Cunning Conference – In-Person in New York – July 24-26, 2026 Today on the show, Isaac & AC welcome David Holmgren, co-originator of the Permaculture concept.In this episode, David describes life at Melliodora in Central Victoria with three semi-autonomous households sharing work and produce, and recounts how he came to the “plant path” through plant ID, foraging, and early research for Permaculture One. He tells the story of meeting Bill Mollison in 1974 and how the idea of agriculture functioning like a forest became a seed of permaculture, while reflecting on Mollison’s charisma and difficulty. The conversation explores holistic thinking versus reductionism, DIY self-reliance, cycles of skill loss and renewal, COVID’s impact on interest in permaculture and RetroSuburbia, “enlightened self-interest,” energy descent and relocalization, household-scale resilience including health capacity, and where to find Holmgren’s essays and websites. 02:11 Meet David Holmgren 03:47 Finding the Plant Path 06:04 Chance Meeting with Bill Mollison 08:15 Permaculture Seed Idea 12:12 Working with a Charismatic Genius 15:31 Patterns vs Practice 21:13 DIY Skills and Tasmania Culture 24:27 Cycles of Self Reliance 28:17 COVID and RetroSuburbia Spike 30:07 Enlightened Self Interest Explained 37:29 Humans as Keystone Species 38:26 Hierarchy and Elite Corruption 40:35 Predators and Power 41:25 Fossil Fuel Hierarchy 42:42 Globalists vs Sovereigntists 44:11 Household Resilience Basics 45:35 Health as Weak Link 47:44 Bigger Households Work 52:17 Household Beats Consensus 55:23 Food Growing Mindset 59:09 Jack of all trades, Master of One 01:03:06 Why Intentional Communities Fail 01:06:49 Brown Tech Uncertainty 01:08:32 Tower of Babe…