This article from Mother Earth News does a great job detailing an actual permaculture project. The following passage from the article offers a great explanation of permaculture as a sort of a reigned-in wildness where the existing trees and land determine the parameters we may operate within:
To me, forest gardening is exciting not only because it promises to increase food yield, but because it offers a deeper connection to the natural world. Those of us who are gardeners usually work with such a “tame” version of nature that we forget we’re part of a much larger and more complex “garden” that we can cooperate with, but cannot control. The forest garden merges the cultivated and the wild; offering food not only for the body, but for the eye and the soul. It can be the place where the Garden of Eden meets the Sacred Grove.
