The first time I tried explaining “financial permaculture” at a dinner party, my friend Sasha nearly choked on her homemade elderberry wine. “Only you,” she spluttered, “would try to compost your bank account.” The table erupted in laughter, and fair enough—the idea of applying ecological principles to personal finance does sound a bit… well, Eliza-ish. But hear me out, because this concept has utterly transformed my relationship with money in ways I never expected.
It all started three years ago during what I now dramatically refer to as my “financial awakening.” I was sitting in my flat, surrounded by my thriving plants, my carefully sorted recycling bins, my homemade cleaning products in neatly labeled jars—all the trappings of my eco-conscious lifestyle—when my laptop pinged with an email from my bank. Overdraft fee. Again. For the third month running.
The irony wasn’t lost on me. Here I was, meticulously measuring out homemade laundry powder to avoid wasteful packaging, while my financial life was about as far from sustainable as you could get. I had my environmental systems beautifully calibrated but was living paycheck to paycheck with no savings, a growing credit card balance, and absolutely no idea where my money went each month. I was creating resilient ecosystems in my garden and chaos in my bank account.
That night, I dug out my bank statements (okay, I logged in online—who gets paper statements anymore?) and did something I’d been avoiding for years: I actually looked at them. Really looked. And what I saw was a money landscape that resembled the sad, compacted clay plot I’d inherited at the allotments—depleted, unbalanced, and desperately in need of some ecological intervention.
It occurred to me, somewhere around midnight with spreadsheets open on my laptop and tea gone cold beside me, that I already knew how to fix unbalanced systems. I did it all the time in my garden. The principles that create abundance in natural systems—diversity, redundancy, capturing and storing energy, obtaining a yield—could they work with money too?
The next morning, I texted Jun, my old housemate from university who’d gone into ethical finance (after years of fixing our mismatched collection of second-hand electronics). “Can you apply permaculture principles to money?” I asked. Ten minutes later, my phone rang. “I’ve been waiting for you to ask me this for literally years,” he said, and I could hear the grin in his voice. That weekend, he came over with a stack of books and a bottle of organic wine, and our financial permaculture workshop began.
The first principle we tackled was observation. In permaculture, you don’t just wade into a new garden and start planting—you watch, you notice patterns, you learn what’s already working before making changes. So instead of immediately setting up some restrictive budget that I’d inevitably rebel against (much like my previous attempts), I just started tracking. Every expense, every income source, every pattern of spending.
What emerged wasn’t pretty. I discovered I had what Jun called “financial monoculture”—an overreliance on a single income stream (my job at Zero Emission Living) with almost no diversity. In garden terms, I was growing just one crop and hoping no blight would come along. I was also “leaking resources” everywhere—subscriptions I’d forgotten about, impulse purchases of eco-products I already had versions of, late payment fees that could have been avoided with better timing.
Most importantly, I realized I was thinking about money in exactly the opposite way that I thought about natural resources. In my garden, I’m obsessed with creating closed-loop systems where outputs become inputs—kitchen scraps become compost become plant food become vegetables become kitchen scraps. But with money, I had a completely linear system—income in, expenses out, nothing captured, nothing cycled back.
Gradually, I started redesigning my financial landscape using the same principles I’d use for a garden renovation. I built more diversity into my income by pitching some freelance writing workshops at the community center and renting my spare room to visiting environmental researchers. Small streams, but they created more resilience in my financial ecosystem.
I set up what Jun calls “catchment systems”—automatic transfers that divert small amounts of money into different savings accounts before I can spend it, just like water catchment systems in garden design. Some of these mini-accounts were practical (tax payments, holiday funds, unexpected repairs), but others were aligned with my deeper values—a “future land project” fund for my dream of starting a small demonstration food forest, a community garden donation pot, a fund for sustainable home improvements.
The biggest change came when I started thinking about my spending as creating relationships, not just transactions. In ecosystem design, every element should serve multiple functions, and every important function should be supported by multiple elements. I began applying this to purchases—does this item create more relationships in my life and community? Does it serve multiple purposes? Is it the only way to fulfill this need?
This led to some interesting shifts. I realized, for instance, that my costly gym membership was really just paying for yoga classes and a shower after my bike commute. So I joined a neighborhood yoga co-op where we take turns hosting sessions in our homes, and arranged to shower at my friend’s flat near the office a couple of days a week in exchange for bringing him fresh vegetables from my allotment. Not only did I save money, but I built stronger community connections—a classic permaculture win-win.
I also got serious about what permaculturists call “zoning”—organizing resources based on how frequently you use them. I had been living in an expensive flat in central Bristol because I thought I needed easy access to everything, all the time. But when I mapped out my actual movement patterns, I realized I could live further out, closer to my community garden and nature reserve, with a slightly longer commute to the office but better access to the things that actually filled my days. My rent dropped by a third when I moved, and my wellbeing improved immeasurably.
The most profound shift was applying the permaculture principle that waste is simply an unused resource. I realized I had all sorts of “waste” in my financial life—from the obvious (food that spoiled before I could eat it) to the subtle (skills I wasn’t using, tools sitting idle in my cupboards, time spent on activities that didn’t align with my values). I started a tool-sharing group on our street, began teaching fermentation workshops using knowledge I’d taken for granted, and became ruthless about eliminating time-wasting activities that didn’t contribute to either joy or purpose in my life.
Now, I’m not going to pretend this transformation happened overnight, or that I’m some paragon of financial sustainability now. God, not even close. Just last month I had what Jun calls a “financial microburst”—when my bicycle and laptop died in the same week, and I had to dip into my emergency fund. Two years ago, that would have gone straight on a credit card and gathered interest for months. Progress, not perfection.
Also, I want to acknowledge that financial permaculture requires certain privileges to implement fully. Having enough income to meet basic needs is a prerequisite that not everyone has. Some of the most ingenious financial ecosystems I’ve seen are designed by people with very limited resources—like my neighbor Elena, who’s created an intricate community care exchange system among single parents on our street—childcare swaps, bulk meal preparation rotations, school run sharing. That’s financial permaculture too, even if it doesn’t involve conventional banking.
I’ve found that, just like in garden design, the edges between financial systems are often the most productive zones. The borderland between formal employment and skill-sharing, between monetary and non-monetary exchanges, between individual and collective resources—that’s where the really interesting possibilities emerge. I’ve set up tiny multiple income streams through odd skills I never thought had value—like the monthly workshop I run teaching people how to make practical items from discarded materials, or the seasonal foraging walks I lead in exchange for help maintaining my allotment.
Perhaps the most unexpected outcome has been how this approach has changed my relationship with money itself. I used to veer between two extremes—either seeing money as somewhat dirty and compromising (the stereotypical environmentalist view) or becoming anxiously fixated on it during tough times. Now I see it more as I see water in a garden—a resource that flows, that can be directed, that supports life when properly managed, and that works best when it’s not hoarded but kept in motion through the right kinds of channels.
Last week, I found myself back at another dinner party (we environmentalists do love our potlucks), explaining my financial pollinator concept—small investments in community projects that may not have immediate returns but create abundance throughout the wider ecosystem. Halfway through my slightly wine-fueled explanation involving native bee species as a metaphor for community bonds, I caught Sasha’s eye across the table. Rather than the eye-roll I expected, she raised her glass with a little nod.
“You know,” she said later as we washed dishes, “that composting your bank account comment I made was actually pretty spot-on. You’re breaking down old patterns and creating something fertile instead.” I nearly dropped a plate—praise from Sasha about financial metaphors is like getting a gold medal in the Overthinking Olympics.
I’m still learning, still experimenting with which approaches work best in which circumstances. My financial system has gaps and occasional imbalances, just like my garden. There are seasons of abundance and seasons that require careful resource management. But the principles hold true—diversity creates resilience, thoughtful design reduces waste, and systems that mimic natural cycles tend to become more abundant over time.
So yes, I am trying to compost my bank account, in a manner of speaking. Breaking down old, unsustainable patterns and transforming them into something that can support new growth—that’s what composting is all about, whether we’re talking about kitchen scraps or spending habits. And like any good compost heap, the process isn’t always pretty, it takes time, and sometimes it gets a bit smelly when you turn it over. But eventually, you create something that nurtures everything it touches. And honestly, couldn’t we all use a financial landscape that does that?
