Ethics, Principles, Platform
Permaculture is a design system grounded in three ethics and twelve principles. Libre Grow isn't just a tool that happens to be useful for growers — it's built on these foundations. Here's how they live in the platform.
The Three Ethics
Everything in permaculture — every principle, every design decision, every action — rests on three ethical commitments.
Earth Care
Care for the living systems that sustain us — soil, water, air, plants, animals, and the relationships between them. In Libre Grow, this shows up as soil health tracking, biodiversity observations, and the long-term records that reveal whether our practices are genuinely regenerative or just extractive in a different way.
People Care
Look after yourself, your community, and future generations. Libre Grow tracks labour time because a system that burns out its people isn't sustainable. The community features exist because growing is better shared. The training courses exist because knowledge should be accessible, not gatekept.
Fair Share
Take only what you need and share the surplus. The platform is open source — the code, the methods, the knowledge are freely shared. Seed saving and seed sharing close the loop on purchased seed. Every observation you record becomes shared knowledge that benefits the whole community.
The Twelve Principles
Built on the ethics, David Holmgren's twelve design principles guide how we observe, design, and act. Here's how each one shapes what Libre Grow does.
Observe and Interact
Spend time understanding before acting. Good design starts with careful observation.
This is the platform's core purpose. The garden journal, structured observations, soil testing records, and photo documentation all exist to help you observe more carefully and turn those observations into shared knowledge. The more you record, the more patterns you see.
Catch and Store Energy
Capture resources at peak abundance for later use.
Seed saving captures genetic energy. Composting captures nutrient energy. The knowledge base captures intellectual energy. Every method you document, every observation you share, every seed lot you track — that's knowledge and biodiversity stored for the future.
Obtain a Yield
Ensure you're getting useful output from your work.
Harvest logging and yield observations help you see what's actually productive — not just what looks good. Labour time tracking reveals the real cost. Over time, you can compare yield across beds, seasons, and methods to focus on what genuinely feeds you.
Apply Self-Regulation and Accept Feedback
Notice when things aren't working and adjust.
The entire Record → Compare → Learn cycle is a feedback mechanism. Soil health trends over time. Germination rates that reveal seed quality. Season-over-season comparisons that show what's improving and what's declining. The platform helps you hear what your garden is telling you.
Use and Value Renewable Resources
Prefer renewable inputs over consumable ones.
By tracking amendments and inputs over time, you can see whether you're moving toward self-sufficiency or staying dependent on bought products. Seed saving reduces seed purchases. Composting turns waste into fertility. The platform makes the trend visible.
Produce No Waste
Every output is an input for something else.
The provenance system tracks how outputs become inputs — harvest waste becomes compost, which becomes soil amendment, which feeds next season's crop. Seed saving closes the loop on seed purchase. Recording these connections makes the circular flow visible and intentional.
Design from Patterns to Details
Start with the big picture, then fill in specifics.
The Project → Branch → Activity hierarchy mirrors this principle. Start with your vision (the project), break it into themes or trials (branches), then record the individual work (activities). The structure encourages thinking from pattern to detail rather than getting lost in the weeds.
Integrate Rather Than Segregate
Relationships between things are as important as the things themselves.
Provenance tracking connects activities and records — showing how things relate, not just what they are. The community connects growers to each other. Methods link to shop products link to observations. The platform is designed around connections, not silos.
Use Small and Slow Solutions
Start small, observe, scale what works.
The trial system encourages testing on one bed before committing the whole garden. Seed saving starts with one easy variety (tomatoes). The platform rewards patience — multi-season records become more valuable than any single observation. Start small. Record what happens. Scale what works.
Use and Value Diversity
Diversity creates resilience.
Multi-site comparison shows how diverse approaches perform across diverse conditions. The seed library preserves genetic diversity. The community forum brings together diverse perspectives and methods. When many growers share structured observations, the community learns which combinations of diversity work best where.
Use Edges and Value the Marginal
The interface between systems is where the most interesting things happen.
Libre Grow itself sits at the edge between science and practice — the space where rigorous observation meets hands-in-the-soil growing. The community brings together beginners and experienced growers, home gardeners and market farmers, scientists and practitioners. The most useful insights often come from these edges.
Creatively Use and Respond to Change
Disturbance is an opportunity, not just a threat.
Recording how your garden responds to droughts, floods, heatwaves, and pest outbreaks builds resilience knowledge that benefits everyone. Over seasons, the community can identify which crops bounce back fastest, which soil practices buffer stress best, and which designs adapt most gracefully to a changing climate.
Built Libre
The permaculture ethics don't stop at the garden gate. They apply to the tools we use too. "Libre" means free — as in freedom. Here's what that means for this platform.
Open Source
The entire platform is published under AGPL-3.0. Anyone can use it, study it, modify it, and share it. No corporation can take this code and lock it away. That's Fair Share applied to software.
Your Data, Your Sovereignty
You own your data. Full export in open formats. No lock-in. If you leave, your records come with you. We will never sell your data or use it for advertising. That's People Care applied to technology.
No Tracking, No Ads
No behavioural tracking. No sponsored content. No algorithm deciding what you see. The platform serves growers, not advertisers. Your attention is not our product.
Knowledge Commons
Shared methods, community observations, and collective learning belong to the community — not to a company. The knowledge you contribute stays open and accessible. That's Earth Care applied to information.
The Deeper Connection
The three ethics say why we grow this way. The twelve principles say how. Libre Grow provides the infrastructure — the shared memory that turns fifty years of scattered permaculture wisdom into collective intelligence.
For too long, most of that wisdom has lived in individual gardens, individual memories, and individual conversations. When an experienced grower leaves a community garden, their knowledge leaves too. When a beginner makes a mistake, they're repeating what a thousand others have already learned.
Libre Grow turns that private learning into shared knowledge — without losing the site-specific, hands-on character that makes permaculture powerful. Every garden is a research site. Every grower is a contributor. The ethics, the principles, and the platform all point in the same direction.
"Observe and interact" is not just a gardening principle. It's a design principle for how knowledge grows.