Last Updated on April 14, 2023
Curious to learn more about permaculture gardening this year? This guide to the best permaculture books can help you choose the savviest additions for your permaculture library, whether you’re a complete beginner or an experienced gardener.
If you’re longing to get more out of your garden with less work, the innovative ideas in these books about permaculture can help you build the most productive garden you’ve ever had.
The list of permaculture books below begins with those aimed at home gardeners wanting to dabble in permaculture, and ends with a few serious textbooks for those who want a fuller understanding of the complexities of permaculture practices.
If you’re not entirely sure what permaculture is or why you’d want to use it in your garden, this post on permaculture principles can give you a quick primer. Here’s more on permaculture design’s history and tenets.
It’s important to know that you don’t need to master every element of permaculture gardening to put many of these valuable ideas into action, so definitely don’t feel like you need to read every book. Though if you get the permaculture bug (as many of us do), you may well want to! Each of the permaculture books decribed below has something unique to offer.
WHICH ARE THE BEST PERMACULTURE BOOKS FOR YOU & YOUR GARDEN?
We’re all about practical around here, so I’m not going to direct people newer to the idea of permaculture to some of the giant textbooks that are certainly very valuable, but aren’t a great place for the permaculture newbie to begin.
I’ve read many permaculture books over the years, and only those I found especially useful are listed below. If you want to check out some additional permaculture books, you can find loads more here.
It’s important to consider how you want to use permaculture. Many of us have established gardens and need to figure out how to incorporate perennial food plants like perennial vegetables, fruit trees and shrubs, and perennial herbs. If you’re starting with a blank slate, your design process can be more thorough, as you build guilds to fill the space you have.
However you plan to apply permaculture in your garden, here are some of the best permaculture books you can find to start expanding your knowledge of this useful garden practice.
WHERE TO GET PERMACULTURE BOOKS
The permaculture books below are linked to two places: Bookshop.org, which gives 10% to independent booksellers, and Amazon. If you love the idea of supporting independent booksellers with your book purchases, check out Bookshop.org.
BEST PERMACULTURE BOOKS FOR BEGINNERS & HOME GARDENERS
The Suburban Micro-Farm by Amy Stross
Permaculture designer Amy Stross’s fantastic book includes detailed information on creating a productive and beautiful landscape, suggesting crops best suited to a suburban yard. Chapters cover topics like soil building, growing herbs for food and medicine, water conservation, pest management, seed saving, and so much more. Her tips on how to manage time for gardening are invaluable to those of us with little time to spare.
You can get the paperback for your bookshelf, or add the inexpensive kindle edition to your library of digital resources.
Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway
Toby Hemenway’s seminal book Gaia’s Garden is an excellent place to start when learning to apply the principles of permaculture to the home garden. Gaia’s Garden begins by explaining ecological gardening principles that help nourish soil, reduce the use of water, provide habitat and food for wildlife, and build a productive food forest. The revised edition includes a section for using permaculture in small urban yards.
Farming the Woods by Ken Mudge and Steve Gabriel
Farming the Woods takes a different approach than many permaculture books by focusing on ways to use an existing forest to grow food and medicinal ingredients. This thoughtful book includes sections that address growing mushrooms, cultivating medicinal plants, incorporating animals, and using wood to heat your home. It also has a chapter about working with a changing climate.
Anyone interested in earning some income from their land will also find this a useful addition to their permaculture book collection.
BEST PERMACULTURE BOOKS ON PARTICULAR CROPS
Perennial Vegetables by Eric Tonsmeier
Eric Toensmeier’s book is an incredible reference for finding lesser-known perennial crops you can grow in your garden. Prepare to be stunned by descriptions of perennial cucumbers, Turkish rocket, oca, and nearly 100 other crops that grow perennially.
Fruit Gardener’s Bible: A Complete Guide to Growing Fruits and Nuts in the Home Garden by Lewis Hill and Leonard Perry
The Fruit Gardener’s Bible covers how to choose, site, and care for fruit trees and shrubs. Chapters are devoted to different kinds of fruits and nuts, pruning tips, and pest control strategies. Note that it doesn’t include citrus fruits if you live in a climate where you’d be able to grow them.
Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms by Paul Stamets
Mycologist Paul Stamets is an authority on all things fungi, and his guide to growing mushrooms is an essential resource for anyone interested in raising some of their own culinary and medicinal mushrooms. Running to 592 pages, the book covers different techniques and substrates for mushroom culture in detail, as well as information on dozens of types of mushrooms.
Other books to consider on growing mushrooms include Psilocybin Mushroom Bible and Mushroom Cultivation for more step-by-step growing tips for beginners.
Gardening Like a Ninja by Angela England
Gardening Like a Ninja offers guidance on how to work edibles into an “ornamental” landscape, as well as many novel ideas about using the edibles (like hostas!) already growing in many yards and gardens. If you’re thinking of trying to add more edibles without creating a whole new garden, this book is a goldmine of ideas.
BEST PERMACULTURE BOOKS FOR ADVANCED READING
If you already have a good grasp of permaculture and want to dig into the nitty-gritty, you can get one of the big textbook-style books on permaculture. For most home gardeners, the permaculture books listed above should more than suffice, but for those students of permaculture who want to have read the classic texts, I list them below.
Money-saving tip: Many academic libraries have copies of these tomes, so you can read over them there and decide if they’re something you want to own.
Edible Forest Gardens Volumes I & II by David Jacke and Eric Tonsmeier
This two-volume set runs over 1000 pages and is jam-packed with detailed information. These are textbooks, so be prepared for an academic read, or keep them on hand for reference. The first volume covers principles, and the second walks through the permaculture design process.
Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual by Bill Mollison
This 600-page textbook by one of the founding fathers of permaculture is probably only worth considering if you want to have read the core books on the subject. At the time of this writing it cost more than twice Edible Forest Gardens. Mollison’s Introduction to Permaculture might be a better read at only 200 pages, but it’s quite pricey as well.
As a cold-climate gardener, I’ve found the permaculture books by Australian authors a bit harder to put into practice. Plus they make me insanely jealous of the things you can grow in a warmer climate.
Find Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual on Amazon.
Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability by David Holmgren
David Holmgren co-founded the idea of permaculture with Mollison and also has several books on the subject. His most renowned, Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability got revised and updated in 2017.
Find it on Amazon.
You can find additional permaculture books by Holmgren here.
Interested in additional permaculture books? You might check out Sepp Holzer’s Permaculture: A Practical Guide, about his innovative ways to work with a colder Alpine climate or Patrick Whitefield’s Earth Care Manual on using permaculture methods in Britain. Other well-regarded books include Martin Crawford’s Creating a Forest Garden and Aranya’s Permaculture Design: A Step-by-Step Guide.
Want even more permaculture books to peruse? You’ll find plenty here.
–> If you love books about plants and gardening, be sure to check out my top recommendations for the best foraging books, best gardening books, and best herbalism books as well!
Do you have some favorite books on permaculture? Please leave a comment if you have a nomination for the best permaculture books.
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Susannah is a proud garden geek and energy nerd who loves healthy food and natural remedies. Her work has appeared in Mother Earth Living, Ensia, Northern Gardener, Sierra, and on numerous websites. Her first book, Everything Elderberry, released in September 2020 and has been a #1 new release in holistic medicine, naturopathy, herb gardening, and other categories. Find out more and grab your copy here.
Hi, I'm Susannah, a garden geek, energy nerd, and fan of healthy food and natural remedies. Need some simple, practical solutions for living healthier and greener? You've come to the right place! More about me and my green projects
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