21 Books For Anyone Interested In Permaculture

If you’re anything like me then you find books to be a great source of education and inspiration. That’s why I keep my shelves full of great books.

photo of permaculture books

Here is a list of 21 great permaculture books that will help you take your permaculture homestead to a whole new level.

A house without books is like a room without windows.
Horace Mann

1. Practical Permaculture

Practical Permaculture: for Home Landscapes, Your Community, and the Whole Earth
  • Timber press or
  • Language: english
  • Book - practical permaculture for home landscapes, your community and the whole...

Last update on 2024-07-26 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API


2. The Resilient Farm and Homestead

Last update on 2024-07-26 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

“Inaction quickly consumes a lifetime. Be curious, be bold, pay close attention to the world in front of you. And start trying stuff.”
― Author Ben Falk

“And relatively self-reliant households are the basic building block of any culture that is viable over the long term without requiring war (stealing of resources) to sustain itself. No democratic civilization can last long if it is built upon a citizenry that consume more than they produce; that’s debt and debt is inherently unsustainable and undemocratic. If our goal is a peaceful, just society, self-reliance at the home and community levels must be a central focus of our lives”
Author Ben Falk


3. Plant Partners

Plant Partners: Science-Based Companion Planting Strategies for the Vegetable Garden
  • Walliser, Jessica (Author)
  • English (Publication Language)
  • 216 Pages - 12/22/2020 (Publication Date) - Storey Publishing, LLC (Publisher)

Last update on 2024-07-26 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

“It was once thought that the odor of certain companion plants deterred pests from feeding. For example, commonly recommended companion plants, such as marigold, peppermint, sage, and thyme, were often chosen for their strong fragrance. But over many years, multiple studies have shown that the scents of these plants don’t necessarily repel pests. Instead, further data are suggesting that these odors mask the volatile chemicals emitted from host plants. This points to the fact that the mechanisms of how certain companion plants deter pests (or don’t, as the case may be) are still being researched and debated among scientists. However, plenty of pest-deterring strategies are backed by solid scientific research, and those are the ones we will consider here.”
― Author Jessica Walliser


4. The Grafter’s Handbook

The Grafter's Handbook: Revised & updated edition
  • Amazon Kindle Edition
  • Bradley, Steve (Author)
  • English (Publication Language)

Last update on 2024-07-26 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API


5. Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability

Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability (Revised Edition)
  • David Holmgren (Author)
  • English (Publication Language)
  • 280 Pages - 07/28/2024 (Publication Date) - Melliodora (Publisher)

Last update on 2024-07-26 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

“If you understand it from an ecological or sustainability perspective, agriculture is the primary way we meet most of our needs, and it’s the greatest form of human intervention on our environment. It has intimately shaped our culture as powerfully as industrial modernity, but for ten thousand years rather than two hundred.”
— AuthorDavid Holmgren


6. The Permaculture Handbook

The Permaculture Handbook: Garden Farming for Town and Country
  • Used Book in Good Condition
  • Bane, Peter (Author)
  • English (Publication Language)

Last update on 2024-07-26 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

“The emergence of garden farms is at hand. Under the pressure of necessity as unemployment rippled through the economy, millions of North Americans turned to gardening or expanded their gardens in 2009 as evidenced by a 40% increase in vegetable seed sales. Urban homesteading is spawning its own literature as energy descent forces more and more households to adapt in place. With income constrained and energy and materials shortages looming, the only resources capable of filling the gap in livelihood are imagination, information, and knowledge, in particular, a deeper understanding of the material cycles and energy flows of nature. For that understanding, we look to permaculture, a language derived from the patterns of the world around us.”

—Author Peter Bane


7. Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual

Permaculture: A Designers' Manual
  • Hardcover Book
  • Bill Mollison (Author)
  • English (Publication Language)

Last update on 2024-07-26 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

“The greatest change we need to make is from consumption to production, even if on a small scale, in our own gardens. If only 10% of us do this, there is enough for everyone. Hence the futility of revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend on the very system they attack, and who produce words and bullets, not food and shelter.”
― Author Bill Mollison


8. Introduction to Permaculture

Introduction to Permaculture
  • Bill Mollison and Reny Mia Slay (Author)
  • English (Publication Language)
  • 208 Pages - 07/28/2024 (Publication Date) - Tagari Publications (Publisher)

Last update on 2024-07-26 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

“Sitting at our back doorsteps, all we need to live a good life lies about us. Sun, wind, people, buildings, stones, sea, birds and plants surround us. Cooperation with all these things brings harmony, opposition to them brings disaster and chaos.”
― Author Bill Mollison


9. Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture

Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, 2nd Edition
  • Ships from Vermont
  • Hemenway, Toby (Author)
  • English (Publication Language)

Last update on 2024-07-26 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

“The average yard is both an ecological and agricultural desert. The prime offender is short-mown grass, which offers no habitat and nothing for people except a place to sit, yet sucks down far more water and chemicals than a comparable amount of farmland.”
― Author Toby Hemenway


10. Sepp Holzer’s Permaculture

Sepp Holzer's Permaculture: A Practical Guide to Small-Scale, Integrative Farming and Gardening
  • Holzer, Sepp (Author)
  • English (Publication Language)
  • 256 Pages - 04/11/2011 (Publication Date) - Chelsea Green Publishing (Publisher)

Last update on 2024-07-26 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

“Nature’s book always contains the truth; we must only learn to read it.”

— Author Sepp Holzer


11. The One-Straw Revolution

The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming (New York Review Books Classics)
  • Fukuoka, Masanobu (Author)
  • English (Publication Language)
  • 200 Pages - 06/02/2009 (Publication Date) - NYRB Classics (Publisher)

Last update on 2024-07-26 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

“When it is understood that one loses joy and happiness in the attempt to possess them, the essence of natural farming will be realized. The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.”
― Author Masanobu Fukuoka


12. Edible Forest Gardens (2 volume set)

Edible Forest Gardens (2 volume set)
  • Used Book in Good Condition
  • Hardcover Book
  • Jacke, Dave (Author)

Last update on 2024-07-26 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

“The first stage of the design phase is the formation of the design concept. The design concept is the ‘big idea’ or organizing notion of the whole design for our site. Our goals statement tells us our mission, and our base map and site analysis and assessment tell us the context within which we will achieve that mission. The design concept defines our vision for achieving that mission in that specific context in its most essential or fundamental aspect. Ideally, all the design details flow from this vision and harmonize with it, support it, and manifest it”

— Author Dave Jacke


13. Restoration Agriculture

Restoration Agriculture
  • Used Book in Good Condition
  • Mark Shepard (Author)
  • English (Publication Language)

Last update on 2024-07-26 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

“What is needed are ecosystems that are designed to produce our food, fuel, animal feed, medicine and fibers, and ecosystems that can do so without the use of fossil fuel technology, those that can tolerate extremes of weather and potentially changing climates, and that can thrive without supplemental irrigation from vulnerable and increasingly expensive public utilities.”
― Author Mark Shepard


14. The Permaculture City

The Permaculture City: Regenerative Design for Urban, Suburban, and Town Resilience
  • Ships from Vermont
  • Hemenway, Toby (Author)
  • English (Publication Language)

Last update on 2024-07-26 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

“Local power is also the realm of the small nonprofit, church, and civic association. A handful of people, properly organized, can drive enormous changes in a city’s dynamics.”

― Author Toby Hemenway


15. Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1

Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1, 3rd Edition: Guiding Principles to Welcome Rain into Your Life and Landscape
  • Lancaster, Brad (Author)
  • English (Publication Language)
  • 288 Pages - 08/22/2019 (Publication Date) - Rainsource Press (Publisher)

Last update on 2024-07-26 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

16. Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 2

Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 2, 2nd Edition: Water-Harvesting Earthworks
  • Lancaster, Brad (Author)
  • English (Publication Language)
  • 448 Pages - 08/23/2019 (Publication Date) - Rainsource Press (Publisher)

Last update on 2024-07-26 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

17. Create an Oasis with Greywater

The New Create an Oasis with Greywater 6th Ed: Integrated Design for Water Conservation, Reuse, Rainwater Harvesting, and Sustainable Landscaping
  • Art Ludwig (Author)
  • English (Publication Language)
  • 162 Pages - 10/14/2015 (Publication Date) - Oasis Design (Publisher)

Last update on 2024-07-26 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

“Like much of the country, we are in a record drought with record heat that is drying us out even more; stressing many shade plants, and threatening our cooling soil-carbon sponges—so we should be doing all we can to capture and hold on to cooling, life-enhancing moisture.”

— Author Brad Lancaster


18. Paradise Lot

Paradise Lot: Two Plant Geeks, One-Tenth of an Acre, and the Making of an Edible Garden Oasis in the City
  • Toensmeier, Eric (Author)
  • English (Publication Language)
  • 240 Pages - 01/25/2013 (Publication Date) - Chelsea Green Publishing (Publisher)

Last update on 2024-07-26 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API


19. Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist

Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist: How to Have Your Yard and Eat It Too
  • Judd, Michael (Author)
  • English (Publication Language)
  • 144 Pages - 12/16/2013 (Publication Date) - Ecologia (Publisher)

Last update on 2024-07-26 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API


20. Teaming with Microbes

Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web, Revised Edition
  • Sold on amazon
  • Language: english
  • Book - teaming with microbes: the organic gardener's guide to the soil food web

Last update on 2024-07-26 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

“One of the most amazing things about mycorrhizal fungi is their ability to associate with more than one host plant at the same time—in other words, their networks can be shared among plants, even plants of different species. As a result of this feat, mycorrhizae can benefit entire forests, as the larger trees literally feed and protect the smaller trees through an interconnected mycelial network. And when one plant dies, many of its nutrients are returned to the network and flow toward other plants.”
― Jeff Lowenfels


21. Mycelium Running

Last update on 2024-07-26 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

“I see the mycelium as the Earth’s natural Internet, a consciousness with which we might be able to communicate. Through cross-species interfacing, we may one day exchange information with these sentient cellular networks. Because these externalized neurological nets sense any impression upon them, from footsteps to falling tree branches, they could relay enormous amounts of data regarding the movements of all organisms through the landscape.”
― Paul Stamets

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    Author, blogger, podcaster, homesteading and permaculture enthusiast. I have a passion for sharing what I learn and helping others on their journey. If you're looking for me, you'll usually find me in the garden.

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