Zone 5
Bill Mollison’s permaculture design system organizes space by intensity of human interaction:
- Zone 0: The home itself
- Zone 1: Daily visits — herbs, salad greens, compost
- Zone 2: Regular visits — fruit trees, main vegetting beds, chickens
- Zone 3: Occasional visits — field crops, orchting, grazing
- Zone 4: Minimal management — timber, foraging, semi-wild
- Zone 5: Wilderness — no management, only observation
Zone 5 is where we are visitors rather than managers. We designed the other four zones. We enter Zone 5 to learn from it.
Every property needs a Zone 5, even if it’s a corner wildlife thicket in an urban lot. Mollison: “We observe, we play, we meditate, and we let the land be. Zone 5 is the instruction manual for the ecological garden.”
The zone serves multiple functions. Ecologically, it provides habitat for beneficial insects, birds, predators that regulate pests. Practically, it shows what wants to grow without intervention — revealing the land’s tendencies before you impose design.
Psychologically, it’s epistemological humility. Not everything should be optimized, controlled, improved. Some spaces exist to remind you what you don’t know, to show patterns you can’t design, to preserve wildness as teacher.
The concept contrasts with “sectors” — external energies you map but don’t control: sun path, wind, water flow, wildlife corridors, fire risk. Zones are about your activity; sectors are about the land’s activity. Good design integrates both.
Zone 5 makes an argument about limits. Industrial logic seeks to maximize productive use of every acre. Permaculture suggests the unmanaged space has its own value — aesthetic and instructive both. You don’t learn from what you control.
Related: [[edge-effect]], [[legibility]]