2.6.1. Introduction

This is a reflection of how permanent different aspects of the site are, and also tend to indicate how expensive or difficult they would be to modify. This scale is used in the design process to determine the biggest challenges on the site, what your boundaries are as a designer, and whether you even want to try the design you have in mind on that piece of land. The more permanent aspects of the scale will limit or influence your design more than the less permanent aspects.

For instance, if your land is a piece of granite rock on a mountain, it is going to be very harsh, climate wise, and difficult to make into anything but rock, landform wise. It will be expensive to do any earthworks or even to access the site potentially. Maybe not the best place to start your first permaculture experiment.

A major use of this scale is, as a designer, to determine how you might use the easier to change elements in the system to address some of the more permanent and harder to change challenges.

Understanding and assessing each of these points can help you to do that, and problem solve in a more regenerative way than many have been able to do without this scale.

This scale was developed by P.A. Yeomans, who contributed some important developments to the permaculture toolbox. We’ll continue to explore his developments in future lessons.

• Climate
• Landform
• Water Supply
• Roads/Access
• Trees
• Structures
• Subdivision, Fences
• Soil

Next we'll look at some examples of each one of these points.