Taking a Permaculture Design Course is a powerful way to get up to speed on Permaculture. It is also an exciting experience that will be remembered for the rest of your life.
So what is Permaculture? Here’s a description from Dave from Orcas Island, Washington. “If I really had to boil permaculture down to a simple three word definition I would say “a design system”. In other words a process. Permaculture gives us a process through which we can take a piece of land. What is the goal of that process? It depends upon the goals of the person for whom you are designing.
However, since permaculture has its feet deeply rooted in ethics, part of those goals will certainly be the ability of the environment to continue to provide ecological functions and the ability of the environment to support people. So you can use permaculture design principles to design a rural homestead, a suburban cul de sac, or an abandoned urban lot. Depending on your goals you can try to make any of these into a retreat center, a single family living space, or a drive-in theater. The permaculture design principles just help you figure out ways to do it that are efficient, economical, and ecologically harmonious.
…Permaculture encompasses a lot of [different] fields. Hopefully, permaculture provides us a way of uniting those fields so they begin to work together efficiently. I remember hearing a story about a construction site where the cabinet maker was walking out of the house feeling satisfied about the beautiful cabinets he just installed. Meanwhile, at the same time, the electrician was walking into the house with a hole saw to drill a hole in the cabinets so he could run a conduit for the lighting. Sounds like an orchestra with no conductor, right? While that example is from construction, that type of thing is going on all the time when folks try to approach sustainability from within only one discipline. Hopefully, the permaculture design process gives you an overarching plan for how everything works together. Permaculture requires a bit of retraining for your mind.”
And about the Permaculture Design Course, Gary Gregory of Northern California says “It was well worth the cost. I have enduring friendships from that time. There are a lot of things on this planet that have more value than money.”
The Permaculture Design Course is 72 hours long, generally taking from 8 to 14 days to complete. It follows the syllabus created by Bill Mollison and uses his book The Permaculture Design Manual as the course text. A certificate of completion is given at the end of the course. This certificate allows the graduate to use the word Permaculture in advertising, teach Permaculture and also be a Permaculture Design Consultant.
Wouldn't you rather be playing in the moist sweet earth?
