UPDATED: As Permaculture Design Course (PDC) graduates, we always like to share permaculture courses that we would recommend. Lisa DePiano, one of our head PDC teachers, is involved with the following courses in the summer and fall of this year.
Please list in the comments any other courses you'd recommend or would like to share. We've already added one shared with us in the comments! We also have a full list of regularly available PDC courses in the Northeast on our resources page if these dates, times and locations are not convenient. Summer 2013 Permaculture Design and Practice - UMass Amherst A great opportunity to build your portfolio and gain skills in permaculture design by touring existing projects and then working as a team to design a permaculture homestead. This three-credit course includes in-class lectures, field trips, design studio and a hands-on field component, to offer students a deepened practice in permaculture design process and techniques. The course culminates with students completing their own permaculture design for a site in the pioneer valley. The framework behind the theory and practice of permaculture is rooted in the observation of natural systems. By observing key ecological relationships, we can mimic and apply these beneficial relationships in the design of systems that serve humans while helping to regenerate the natural world. This course trains students as critical thinkers, observers, and analysts of the world(s) around them, and provides tools needed to design for positive change. Successful completion of this course and PLSOILIN 197G in the fall semester will enable students to be eligible for the internationally recognized permaculture design certificate.
Important Dates; Last Day to: Register 7/11, Drop 7/12, Withdraw 7/26 Refund Schedule: Full refund through 7/12 (registration fee not refundable) No refund after 7/12 Fall 2013 F.E.A.S.T. Permaculture Design Course (the course we took!) This weekend permaculture design course moves from principles and patterns to details in a supportive, respectful and collaborative atmosphere to promote rapid learning of whole systems design. The course will center around experiential learning and hands-on skill building, including local field trips where we will see theory in action. The course will conclude with a design practicum, where participants will work in small groups to develop a design for the course client. Dates and Cost: September 7,8, 28, 29 October 18 (evening only), 19, 20 November 2, 3, 16, 17, 30 December 1, 7 (make up day in case of bad weather) $998 early bird price $1250 after August 1st Tons of info, testimonials, and registration instructions on the website here: http://permaculturefeast.org/ --------------- Earth Activist Training Prospect Rock Permaculture Center, Johnson, Vermont September 7-21, 2013 Instructors: Starhawk, Charles Williams, Keith Morris, Lisa DePiano, and Skotty Kellogg A two-week permaculture design certificate course with a focus on organizing and activism, and a grounding in earth based spirituality. Learn how to heal soil and cleanse water, how to design human systems that mimic natural systems, using a minimum of energy and resources and creating real abundance and social justice. Explore the strategies and organizing tools we need to make our visions real, and the daily practice, magic and rituals that can sustain our spirits. Participatory, hands-on teaching with lots of ritual, games, projects, songs, and laughs along with an intensive curriculum in ecological design. Visit the EAT course information page and sample schedule for details on this course.
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We love catching up on reading during the winter months. Our Master Gardener Course recommended several books for each area of class focus to supplement the core course reading. Some are great reference run-to-and-grab books, while others are also great read-throughs. Many, if not all, of these books are available at Chelsea Green Publishing, Amazon, or your local bookstore. We haven't linked any of these to a particular source to purchase them, so you can find them where and when you want. We particularly recommend Teaming with Microbes, What's Wrong With My Plant (and How Do I Fix It?) and Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast. Soil Science Teaming with Microbes, Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis - This book will change the way you think about soil and plant nutrition! Botany Botany for Gardeners, Brian Capon - A good primary overview, very readable Garden Design Home Outside, Julie Moir Messervy - Concepts accessible to the home gardener Entomology Good Bug, Bad Bug, Jessica Walliser - Common pest and beneficial insects in the home garden, good photos Pathology What’s Wrong With My Plant? (and How Do I Fix It?), David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth - Flow charts help gardeners learn the steps of diagnosis Woody Plants Sibley Guide to Trees, David Sibley - Good illustrations, covers majority of trees in our landscape Reading the Forested Landscape, Tom Wessels - Essential for understanding how woody plants interact in New England Weed Ecology Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide, Lawrence Newcomb Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast, Peter Del Tredici - Weeds you should be familiar with in our zone Pruning Hands on Gardener: Pruning, Robert Kourik - Easy to follow, good illustrations The Pruning Book, Lee Riech Fruit Culture The Backyard Orchardist and The Backyard Berry Book, Stella Otto - Excellent guide to care of small fruits in the home landscape Vegetable Gardening The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible, Edward Smith - Great book, well organized, easy to follow 100 Vegetables and Where They Come From, William Woys Weaver Propagation Hands on Gardener: Seeds and Propagation, Susan McClure - Covers propagation techniques available to the home gardener Houseplants Well-Clad Windowsills, Tovah Martin - Groups plants by best exposure, good care guide Perennials The Well-Tended Perennial Garden, Tracy DiSabato Aust - Excellent care instructions for a wide variety of common perennials Turf Care The Organic Lawn Care Manual, Paul Tukey - Learn good care practices that will promote healthy lawn growth Goal articulation is the first step in any design process. This is true for a permaculture project in your backyard, or when working with a community space. As a designers with clients, we must actively listen and absorb information from them, paying attention to how they articulate their goals and how you process re-articulate them. People get locked into idea of what they want; instead of form or details, focus more on function and the bigger picture. By seeing alternatives and spending time on exploration, we can help expand the palate of possibility. When we design for our own living spaces or communities, we are both the client and designer, and must also actively listen to, absorb and process our goals for action. It's important to use PTAV (present tense active voice) when articulating goals. Setting goals in the present tense helps us see what it feels like by saying "this is the way it is". The goals set set this way are not in the past or the future, and are more powerful in the present. Using an active voice, we become the do-ers, connecting thought and action, theory to practice. Here is a worksheet adapted from Edible Forest Gardens Volume 2 that describes the goal articulation process in depth: To start the design process for the Cliff Garden in Waltham in 2011, we articulated our goals, and keep a copy of these goals where when we are drafting designs and during installation to help guide us.
1) Our garden grows and feeds us the produce we currently eat most often:
2) Our garden grows and fees us new food that we love to eat but never knew about before our PDC
3) We hang out in a chill social space outside near our garden
4) We attract abundant wildlife to our garden and they love it here, including: birds, chipmunks, ducks, bees, dragonflies, ladybugs, spiders, worms, mushrooms, microbes, squirrels 5) We have a pond that supports a vibrant aquaculture including: fish, frogs, water chestnuts, lilies These goals were ambitious in our first year of applying permaculture. We did not meet all of our goals, and many goals were not realized in the ways that we thought they would in the beginning. We didn't grow many shrubs or trees, and focused on perennial and annual herbaceous crops for the most part. We did however, eat a lot of food from the backyard, made salads, tinctures, sat and enjoyed abundant wildlife while eating alpine strawberries, all which happened after many steps later in the design process... Niche Analysis is one of many permaculture design tools we can to implement the least change for greatest effect. By understanding needs and yields of all elements in any system, we can organize relationships among these elements to mimic nature. We can also use this tool to think outside of the anthropocentric norm to fulfill needs and utilize needs that includes but is not limited to human involvement. This helps us understand what needs could be fulfilled by other parts of the system rather than external sources, and identify potential problems and their solutions before implementing a design. You want to run a niche analysis on all elements within your system, from plants, to animals, to uninvited guests, neighbors and yourself. One way to do this is to use scrap paper, one piece for each element, and write down the following:
Also make note of:
Element Examples (Needs/Wants):
As part of our Permaculture Design Course, we watched Bill Mollison's "In Grave Danger of Falling Food". Here are some of the key points we took from the film (which you can watch for free on YouTube!) Permaculture aesthetics - Tidiness is maintained disorder - the garden does not have to be neat and clean. Nature wants abundance, not to only be aesthetically pleasing.
Resiliency and redundancy - Each element in a permaculture design supports many different functions, just like the forest. In the forest, everything has its duty. The birds are the planters. Fertile forests that are a billion years old are so complex that they are highly adaptable and productive. Permaculture is reliable. It is not stable like concrete or roads, there are hundreds of constant adjustments that need to be made like when you ride a bike. It is not like a machine. Teaching and learning - permaculture offers tools to show people they already have the resources - reskilling. You just have to put things in the right places and understand relationships already present in nature. Modern agriculture - produces money not food = agribusiness. Yet Commercially available food would be 95% cheaper if the food was grown locally (New York City as an example). 13% of food is lost in the distribution process. Since the 1940s:
Some Quotes from Bill (not verbatim):
In our F.E.A.S.T. Permaculture Design Course, we brainstormed a list of "the shoulders we stand on", the pioneers that have come before us - people, places, books, experiences - that we draw upon and have gratitude for:
There are many more that are not present on this list -- What would you add? |
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