Mollison has said: Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labour; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single product system..
The juice of jewelweed is a traditional remedy for all sorts of skin ailments including poison ivy. An oft-repeated folk saying, Wherever poison ivy is found, jewelweed grows close by. To use it, you can simply crush the leaves and rub it on the itchy places.
To eradicate poison oak and poison ivy chemically, use an herbicide that contains glyphosate, triclopyr, or a 3-way herbicide that contains 2,4-D amine, dicamba and mecoprop. See Table 1 for products containing these active ingredients. These herbicides can kill desirable plants, so be careful. If the poison ivy or poison oak is growing among plants you want to save, you can cut back the poison ivy or poison oak and spray or paint the herbicide only on the freshly cut stems or stump.