Permaculture Practice 2: How We See - Patterns, Energy & Place

This book explores how learning to see more clearly shapes the way we understand place, context, and possibility.

Building on Permaculture Practice I: How We Think, it turns attention outward — to the patterns already present in landscapes, communities, and everyday life. Rather than focusing on elements or designs, it looks at how energy moves through branching, cycles, pulses, care, and incoming forces.

These patterns are not presented as templates to copy, but as ways of reading place more carefully. By learning to notice how energy flows, accumulates, and interacts, it becomes easier to understand what a system can realistically support — and where restraint may be wiser than intervention.

This book does not tell you what to do.

Its purpose is to develop pattern literacy: the ability to observe, interpret, and stay with complexity without rushing to simplify it. Over time, this way of seeing informs more grounded analysis and more appropriate decisions.

Like the first book in the series, it is reflective rather than instructional, and is designed to be read slowly, returned to, and used alongside lived observation.

This book can be read independently, or alongside the accompanying audio course on the Skool platform, where spoken reflections and lived examples expand on the ideas explored here.

Suitable for:

learners wanting to deepen their observational skills

permaculture practitioners and designers

educators and mentors

anyone interested in systems thinking, place-based learning, and living lightly