Bill Mollison
Co-originating permaculture, then building the teaching lineage that carried it to every continent.
The record
- Standing
- foundational work
- Years
- 1928–2016
- Based
- The Permaculture Institute · Tasmania, Australia
- Also published as
- Bruce Charles Mollison
- Before permaculture
- Born at Stanley, in Tasmania’s north-west; left school at fifteen and worked as a shark fisherman, seaman, forester and mill worker before lecturing at the University of Tasmania.
- Founded
- The Permaculture Institute, 1978. Later co-founded Permaculture Institute, Inc. with Scott Pittman.
- Recognition
- Right Livelihood Award, 1981, for developing and promoting the theory and practice of permaculture. Reported to be the first foreigner invited into the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
- Wrote
- Permaculture One (1978, with David Holmgren); Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual (1988); Introduction to Permaculture (1991). He founded Tagari Publications in 1979 to publish them.
Standing is this studio’s placement of the work, not a ranking of the person, and it is the one line here that is a judgement rather than a cited fact.
The work
Mollison arrived at design from the outside — a working life in Tasmanian bush and industry first, an academic post second. Permaculture One, written with David Holmgren and published in 1978, argued for working with rather than against natural process and for cultivating species suited to the conditions actually present on a site.
The books that carried the method were his own. Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual (1988) is still the field’s reference text, and Introduction to Permaculture (1991) is the door most people came in through; he founded Tagari Publications in 1979 to put them out.
The more consequential invention was the format. The seventy-two-hour design certificate he built at the Permaculture Institute made every graduate a potential teacher, which is why the practice propagated the way a plant does rather than the way a company does. He also carried the argument to a general audience through the Global Gardener television series.
He died in Hobart in September 2016, aged eighty-eight.
Where to read them
- Permaculture One: A Perennial Agriculture for Human Settlements (1978), with David Holmgren The founding text; still in print from Melliodora.
- Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual (1988) The field’s reference text.
- Introduction to Permaculture (1991) From Tagari, the press he founded.
- The Permaculture Institute, Inc. The teaching body he co-founded, and its account of his work.
Sources for this record
Corrections
This record was assembled from the sources above, and nothing in it was inferred to fill a gap. If it is about you and it is wrong, or you would rather not be listed, write and it changes.