Everything Gardens

Definition and orientation

Everything Gardens means that organisms and elements actively change their environment through feeding, sheltering, shading, disturbing, depositing, transporting and selecting. The phrase enlarges the designer’s attention beyond human intention. Modification is not automatically beneficial: the same agency can regenerate one relationship and damage another.

Practical meaning: For each significant organism or element, trace what it moves, removes, adds, shelters and disturbs over time. Consider cumulative and off-site effects, not only the desired service. Design access, stocking, boundaries and feedback around actual behaviour. Treat humans and institutions as modifying agents too.

Questions it can guide:

• How does this organism or element alter its surroundings?
• Who or what benefits, and who is exposed?
• Which placement, limit or feedback keeps its agency constructive?

Origins, lineage and attribution

This page belongs to Mollison’s attitudinal principle tradition. The displayed title follows the authorised Academy catalogue; the closing acknowledgement records the nearby source wording where it differs.

Similar themes appear in David Holmgren’s twelve principles, but overlap is handled through explicit cross-links. The formulations are not represented as one list, and authorship is not transferred between traditions. The Academy paraphrases the practical meaning rather than reproducing substantial passages from the source books.

Ethical and principle context

Using Biological Resources examines living work; Each Element Performs Many Functions examines stacked roles; GRAZER supplies a framework for governing animal relationships, welfare and cycling.

Use Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share to test purpose, consequence and distribution. A provocative principle can widen judgement, but it cannot certify a preferred action. Pair it with evidence, a counter-question and a named review point.

When and how to use it

1. Name the decision, scale, affected people and living systems.
2. Translate the principle into context-specific questions rather than repeating it as a command.
3. Add a counter-question about safety, consent, urgency, maintenance or unequal effects.
4. Use a suitable framework or tool to gather evidence and compare alternatives.
5. Choose a proportionate action, state uncertainty and distinguish proposal from completion.
6. Record what observation or feedback would trigger adaptation or stopping.

Application in Mark’s Diploma and at Vila Pinheiro

Design 06’s integrated-livestock proposal explicitly invokes Everything Gardens. It identifies chickens and ducks for pest control, manure, eggs and weed management, and goats for grazing, brush control, manure, dairy and meat. The page is a design account and cross-reference to Design 09; it does not verify every claimed benefit, income, disease reduction or completed livestock system.

Evidence boundary: the representative connection was checked in Mark D’Cruz, Design 06: Food Self-sufficiency, controlled Diploma PDF, PDF page 39. The master register records broader use across Designs 1–10, but declaration alone is not converted into a public case result.

Limits, critiques and common misuse

• Assuming every environmental modification is beneficial.
• Treating animal behaviour as a free service without welfare and containment.
• Ignoring cumulative effects, neighbours or downstream systems.
• Using the slogan instead of observing what actually changes.

No principle replaces consent, law, competent technical advice, ecological assessment or accountable maintenance. Where principles pull in different directions, make the tension visible rather than selecting only the phrase that supports an existing preference.

Where this material comes from

This attitudinal principle is associated with Bill Mollison and appears in Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual (1988), where the source wording is “Everything gardens (or modifies its environment)”. It belongs to a provocative design attitude intended to change how a designer frames nature, constraints, intervention, yield and agency. This page uses the authorised catalogue title “Everything Gardens”; although teaching summaries use minor wording variants, these do not make the principle part of David Holmgren’s later twelve-principle formulation. Mark D’Cruz used or recorded this principle in his Diploma register; he is not its originator, and the master register records it as LIB-054. Its lineage and wording have been checked against the named publication tradition and Permaculture Association teaching records. The representative Diploma connection is limited to PDF page 39, with proposals kept distinct from measured outcomes.

Related entries

• How to Use Principles Without Turning Them into RulesPair a principle with evidence, counter-questions and a review point.
• Comparing Permaculture Principle TraditionsKeep the Mollison and Slay, Mollison attitudinal and Holmgren traditions distinct.
• Principles, Patterns and Systems ThinkingUse principles together without treating a slogan as proof.
• Bill Mollison: Permaculture as a Design SystemFollow Mollison’s wider contribution and Mark’s critical appreciation.
• GRAZERExamine Mark’s documented closed-loop animal-system framework and its limits.
• Input-Output AnalysisTrace needs, outputs, exchanges and hidden work.
• Produce No WasteCompare Holmgren’s waste-prevention and cycling perspective.
• From Survey to Design at Vila PinheiroSee proposals, constraints and evidence connected at whole-site scale.