Course Overview
What will we cover?
Here are some of the aspects we will cover in the course. This is not exhaustive but covers the basics of the curriculum.
Permaculture Concept
Learn all about permaculture, its principles, ethics, and how it applies to all aspects of our lives and that of our society.
Permaculture Design Process
Understand the step by step process of Permaculture Design. Learn how to observe and assess environments and sites, learn how to engage members of the the family or community into the process. Learn how to take the information you gather and craft it in a cultivated ecosystem that provides for all the needs of the people living in it in a way that is regenerative to nature and our culture.
Understanding Ecosystems and the Functioning of Nature
You will learn how to assess ecosystem function in your area and site, how to read the landscape and all the processes happening within it. We will look into the Pattern Language of Nature, how Climate Systems work, how to assess and understand the impact of land shape, water cycles, soils and plant ecosystems on your design thinking.
Themes in Design
Critical to understanding permaculture and applying it is to understand how to apply design into the themes of permaculture. These cover plants, animals, structures and buildings, water systems, soils, economics, society, and more.
Holistic Context
Essential to permaculture design is understanding the context of our lives from a Holistic perspective and developing a quality of life goal that guides what we are designing for and guides our decision making in design into the future. This crucial work by Alan Savory forms the foundation of all good decision making and gives a clear direction to designing.
Design and Management Tools
The course will cover the wide range of effective design assisting tools available to us in our process of designing homes, gardens, farms, neighbourhoods, businesses and more. We will use all sorts of interesting planning tools that enable us to properly time our interventions and activities in the establishment and management of our systems. These range from garden calendars, companion planting guides, mobile animal systems, agroforestry, swales, keyline scale of permanence, mapping, survey instruments, machines, solar systems and so much more. These tools and techniques are vast and context specific and learning about where and how to use them is vital to effective design and implementation.
Major Design Project
The main outcome of the course is the major design project. This is where you apply all you have covered and learnt into completing a permaculture design based on the course requirements of a property of your choice. The course is the ultimate opportunity to do a design supported by the facilitators and fellow students, where you can get expert inputs into your design process and have the structured environment of the course to ensure that the design is done effectively.
This process runs through the duration of the course and each module of the course, which runs over a week will result in a step of the design being completed so that by the end of the course you will have a permaculture design of your site that you can start implementing.