In brief
Holmgren's ninth permaculture principle: small and slow systems are easier to maintain than big ones, make better use of local resources and last longer.
What the principle says
Use small and slow solutions is the ninth of the twelve principles in David Holmgren's Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability (2002). Its short description on the principle's website says that small and slow systems are easier to maintain than big ones, make better use of local resources and lead to more lasting results. Behind this lies a plain observation: every system has a size at which it works best, and beyond that size it begins to cost more than it gives. A large machine needs fuel, spare parts and specialists from far away. A small solution can often be built, repaired and understood by the people who use it.
Slowness is the other half. A change made slowly can be watched, and what is watched can be corrected. Whoever plants ten trees, follows them through a summer and then plants the next ten learns more than someone who plants a thousand in one season and loses half of them. Slow does not mean idle. It means letting the pace of work follow the pace at which soil, plants and people can really change.
The principle holds a tension with one of Bill Mollison's rules. Mollison wanted designers to accelerate succession, while Holmgren advises small and slow solutions. As the page on Mollison's design rules explains, the two meet where a designer speeds up nature's own sequence with modest steps instead of forcing a result with machines and fuel. Mollison's small-scale intensive systems share the word small with this principle; Holmgren adds the slowness.
The idea reaches beyond the land. The principle's website collects examples such as local seed networks that adapt varieties to their place over many years, and small community working days that plant one garden at a time. Many small gardens linked together can change a neighbourhood more lastingly than one large project.
The old proverbs
Holmgren gives this principle two sayings: "the bigger they are, the harder they fall" and "slow and steady wins the race".
The first is a warning about size. A large tree falls with more force than a sapling, and a large system fails with more damage than a small one. A single big dam that bursts does more harm than many small ponds, and a farm that depends on one crop, one buyer or one machine can be ruined by one failure.
The second comes from the old fable of the hare and the tortoise. The hare is faster but stops to rest; the tortoise keeps going and arrives first. On the land the tortoise is the gardener who mulches a little every week, the farmer who mends one rill on the slope each year, the young tree that is given time to root before it is asked to bear.
How it looks in nature
Nature builds its most lasting structures slowly. Soil is the clearest case. According to the FAO, forming just two to three centimetres of soil can take up to a thousand years; other FAO texts give the same span for a single centimetre. Erosion, by contrast, can strip soil away within a very short time. The figures are a rough guide, since the pace depends on climate, rock, slope and life, but they explain why soil, once lost, is regarded as practically non-renewable within a human lifetime.
Succession follows the same rhythm. On bare ground the first to arrive are fast, short-lived pioneer plants. They grow quickly, die back quickly and leave shade, litter and looser soil behind. Slower and longer-lived species follow in their shelter, and the slowest, such as the oaks of a Mediterranean woodland, take decades to reach their full size. Speed belongs at the beginning of the sequence, permanence at its end. Ecological succession describes these stages in detail.
Nature also prefers many small units to a few large ones. Rain does not arrive as one flood but as countless drops, and a healthy slope receives it in countless small hollows, root channels and burrows. Where these small stores are missing, the water runs together into a single stream and carries the soil away with it.
Where the principle works in the TerraWiki
- The zai pit is a hand-dug planting hole that gathers water and compost exactly where a seed grows; Yacouba Sawadogo used such pits over decades to grow a forest on barren land in Burkina Faso.
- The half-moon and the microcatchment hold rain in many small basins instead of one large reservoir.
- Olla irrigation releases water slowly through the wall of a buried clay pot, right at the roots.
- Sheet mulching builds soil in place, layer by layer, without machines.
- Compost turns small daily amounts of leftovers into humus over months.
- Pioneer plants and nurse trees prepare the ground step by step for the species that follow.
- Tony Rinaudo showed that farmers can let trees regrow from the living stumps and roots already in their fields, one field at a time and at very little cost; for southern Niger, Chris Reij and colleagues estimated in 2009 that farmers had regreened around five million hectares in this way.
At Sa Medada
Sa Medada is a slope in Jerzu, in Ogliastra on the east side of Sardinia, with mild winters and a dry season that lasts roughly from May to September. Project Eden is still in its early stages there. The first tree, a service tree, was planted in 2024 on the very hot southern flank. Banana, mango, avocado, cherimoya, papaya, moringa and citrus are being trialled in the microclimate, and how each of them copes is part of what the land teaches us.
Swales are planned; none has been built yet. Project Eden begins with pioneer plants, ground cover and holding water. Pioneer plants are fast by nature, so starting with them speeds up succession in Mollison's sense; the principle adds that each step should stay small enough to be watched. A laboratory analysis of the soil does not exist yet, so we make no claims about how fast the soil is changing.
Along the journey
The eighth principle, Integrate rather than segregate, connects the parts of a design; this one sets the pace at which those connections can grow. The tenth, Use and value diversity, adds that many different small solutions are stronger together than one large one.
Plants in this entry
Frequently asked
What does use small and slow solutions mean in permaculture?
It is the ninth of David Holmgren's twelve permaculture principles. It holds that small and slow systems are easier to maintain than big ones, make better use of local resources and lead to more lasting results. A small solution can usually be built, understood and repaired by the people who use it. A slow one leaves time to watch what happens and to correct course. Together they favour many modest, well-observed steps over one large intervention that depends on machines, fuel and outside expertise.
Does slow mean waiting and doing nothing?
No. Slow means that the pace of work follows the pace at which soil, plants and people can actually change. A gardener who mulches a little every week, plants a few trees each season and watches how they fare is working steadily, not waiting. What the principle warns against is the large leap that cannot be watched: clearing a whole hillside at once, planting a thousand trees in one season, or building earthworks before the land has been read. Small steps leave room to learn from each one.
Why are small systems often more resilient than large ones?
A small system fails in small ways. If one of many little ponds leaks, the others still hold water; if one large dam breaks, the damage can be severe. Small systems also depend less on distant supplies of fuel, spare parts and specialists, so they keep working when those supplies fail. And because many small units are spread across a landscape, they catch rain, shade and nutrients where they are needed instead of collecting them in one place and sending them out again.
How can I use small and slow solutions in my own garden?
Start with one bed close to the house and look after it well before you begin the next. Mulch and compost in small amounts throughout the year instead of one big effort in spring. Plant a few trees, watch them through a summer and then plant more where they did well. Hand tools, a few buried clay pots for watering and small hollows that hold rain are often enough. Swap seeds and cuttings with neighbours. Each step is cheap, easy to undo and teaches you something about your place.
How does Terra Humana apply the principle at Sa Medada?
At Sa Medada in Jerzu, Sardinia, Project Eden is still in its early stages. The first tree, a service tree, was planted in 2024 on the very hot southern flank. Banana, mango, avocado, cherimoya, papaya, moringa and citrus are being trialled in the microclimate, and how each of them copes is part of what the land teaches. Swales are planned but not yet built. A laboratory analysis of the soil does not exist yet.
Related terms
Mentioned in
See this in practice
Further reading from around the world
Freely available sources we recommend for going deeper.
Sources
- David Holmgren, Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability, Holmgren Design Services (2002, revised edition Melliodora Publishing 2017)
- Holmgren Design, Principle 9: Use small and slow solutions, permacultureprinciples.com (accessed October 2026)
- FAO, World Soil Day, fao.org/world-soil-day (accessed October 2026), and FAO Newsroom, Cherishing the ground we walk on (5 December 2017)
- Ross Mars, Principles of Permaculture, comparison of the principles of Mollison and Holmgren, Permaculture West, permaculturewest.org.au (accessed October 2026)
- Chris Reij, Gray Tappan and Melinda Smale, Agroenvironmental Transformation in the Sahel: Another Kind of Green Revolution, IFPRI Discussion Paper 00914 (2009)
- World Vision Australia, FMNR Hub, Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration, fmnrhub.com.au (accessed October 2026)
Last updated: 2026-10-16