Permaculture Classes Description

updated August 2008

 

If this is your first permaculture class, there are several things you need to know:

Permaculture courses are not “how to” gardening courses, nor do they routinely teach gardening skills in detail. Rather, they help you learn the range of information you need to assemble, study and connect to end up with a wonderful, satisfying and sustainable garden, house, community or natural area.

 

So permaculture ideas are essential if you want to design your garden well. The gardening course touches on many issues that make gardening effective, more productive and easier. The courses are crucial for gardening design and designing anything else including towns and even kitchens.

 

Permaculture Designers Certificate Course

 

Since 2000, The Permaculture Guild of Houston has taught a Permaculture Design Certificate Course every other week on weekday nights with an occasional weekend day. In summer 2008, we introduced a redesigned certificate course where almost all of the instruction is intensive on weekends. In the new system there will be five course modules. Their content will be largely similar to the previous course, but the new one incorporates more hands-on learning.

 

In the new design course, there will be four modules before taking the last tutorial module. An Introduction to Permaculture and The Basics of Permaculture is a prerequisite module to all of the other modules. The next three modules are Designing Bountiful Gardens (fall), Designing Our Green Homes & Communities (winter), and Restoring Nature (spring). These three modules can be taken in any order. However, to register for any of these modules, one must first take Module 1, An Introduction to Permaculture and Basics of Permaculture. Once all four of these modules have been completed, students can elect to work on Module 5 or The Permaculture Design Certification Tutorial.

 

Course instructors from the The Permaculture Guild of Houston include Joe Blanton, Mark Bowen, Lewis Coleman, Gary Edmondson, David Gresham, Bill Hancock, Diana Liga, Shawn McFarland, Dr. Bob Randall, Ray Sher, MC Swearingen, Kevin Topek, Amanda Tullos, Jennifer Walker, Gita & Cas Van Woerden and many others.

 

Module 1: An Introduction To Permaculture and Basics of Permaculture

An Introduction To Permaculture

 

Permaculture is a design system for creating a sustainable local quality of living while minimizing the need for materials and energy. It is the most advanced design concept for creating gardens, landscapes, farms and ecosystems. It also helps design sustainable buildings and societies that can prosper easily and efficiently for centuries while minimizing energy and materials use. In this orientation, learn about FIVE modules over the next year that will help make your home and community more sustainable, and your yard, farm and community into a vibrant bird- and butterfly-filled space, resplendent with gourmet vegetables and fruits. It includes a introduction to permaculture and the instructors, a description and explanation of the courses and a video about the founder of permaculture.

Basics of Permaculture

This class examines permacultural concepts and principles that are broadly useful in designing sustainable landscapes, natural areas, structures and communities of the highest quality. Coursework includes the three ethical and 12 design principles of permaculture, methods of design using multiple connections, and the causes and importance of climate. It also includes zones (designs that reduce labor); sector (designs that incorporate wild energies such as wind and rain); pattern and edge (designs that increase biodiversity and direct sectors); and mapping (thoughtful placement of trees, animals, structures, gardens to use all these principles). This class is required in order to take any other permaculture course.

 

Module 2
Designing Bountiful Gardens

Designing Bountiful Gardens is one of five modules, and is open to anyone who has completed Module 1: An Introduction to Permaculture and The Basics of Permaculture. No knowledge of gardening is assumed. This course tours and explains urban and rural gardens designed using permaculture, demonstrates some basic gardening skills, and surveys the permaculture of vegetables, fruits, and domestic animals. It also examines the placement of all these so that the whole is maximally productive. Water, pest management, garden ecology, and climate are also featured. Excellent lunches provided.

 

The first weekend afternoon begins with guided tours of two permaculturally-designed urban gardens full of food plants placed so as to achieve many purposes. The next day is at Urban Harvest and considers pests and the ecology of pest management, the permaculture of vegetables, ecosystems and plants from around the world, placing plants to benefit each other, and organizing communities to produce and consume the highest quality food.

 

The second weekend lasts one day and is at Urban Harvest. It covers domestic animals, climate and seasons in gardening, fertile soil, fruit trees, learning gardening, and designing a garden.

 

The last weekend is about 90 minutes west of Houston at Animal Farm Permaculture Center. Carpooling will be encouraged strongly. Both days there will feature excellent mid-day lunches. Go here to see directions to Animal Farm.

 

On Saturday, we will study how to move and keep rainwater where we want it, how to provide drainage for plants, do some more garden designing, and then spend most of the day building a vegetable garden. Those who choose to spend the night will pay an additional fee for dinner and breakfast or they can simply return the next morning. On Sunday, there will be hands-on demos of planting seeds and transplants, sheet mulching, irrigation, fruit tree pruning, and tree planting. This is not enough time to learn these tasks well, but enough to learn what is involved and where to learn more.

 

Module 3

Our first session at Urban Harvest focuses on the various components of nature: trees and forests, prairies and wetlands, Texas ecosystems, and the local bioregional organizations that work to support them.

Our second is at a natural area. It examines some of the threats to our world and local ecosystems, goes over the basic ideas of ecology, and then spends the bulk of the day learning how to observe nature using the permaculture perspective.

Our last session will be at a local natural area and will be devoted to restoring a habitat feature.

 

Module 5
Permaculture Design Certification Tutorial
In this class, students who have completed all of the other modules are invited to design an 8-hour project by consulting with a Guild teacher and then presenting to the group of students and teachers at a graduation party. Taking this module helps the student to see if they have learned everything the teachers think needs to be addressed in the design the student selects. It also provides an opportunity to see what fellow students have designed so it provides significant additional education at a higher level.

 

Information Useful for Taking the Courses

 

So What is Permaculture?
Permaculture designers are often asked what permaculture is about and why it is important. Since our design curriculum to achieve basic understanding is 90 hours long, this is by no means an easy subject to explain in a few words. The term permaculture was coined by Australian Bill Mollison to refer to a nature-inspired design philosophy for creating permanent cultures by assuring their prerequisite— permanent, that is sustainable, agriculture. Mollison was concerned decades ago about the unsustainable nature of our fossil fuel economy. An as a forester, he was impressed with the stability and productivity of mature forests. He believed that humans could profitably copy many of the ideas we get from observing nature and applying them in gardens, towns, and structures we create.

 

But an etymology—permanent culture--is by no means a definition. Broadly, permaculture is an effort to reduce labor needed and energy consumed in all aspects of human endeavor so that scarce resources are used to their max and waste is absolutely minimized. One concomitant of the effort to reduce waste and energy use is the effort to produce as much food as possible as close to where one lives as is practical.

The permacultural method borrows heavily from a very accurate understanding of ecology, the efficiencies nature creates, and an effort to understand all technologies ancient and modern that might help.

 

Like Reading, It Takes Many Hours to “Get It”
Learning permaculture is like learning anything that is complicated—it takes time and exposure. Like reading, the first lessons may seem disjointed, and it may be difficult to see how the concepts are relevant to one’s life. If you are a professional, a few of the topics may even seem elementary. If you stick with it for a few months, we can confidently guarantee that your appreciation of the ideas will be very high.

 

Permaculture classes teach people how to be sustainable designers. If you haven’t thought of yourself as a designer, it may take you a few months to get use to it. Designers make good plans to do whatever they want and they use hundreds of principles. Sustainable designers do it without hurting the planet or the living things on it. They want a sustainable planet. But it takes time to understand so many principles.

 

Text Support
By far the best book on permaculture is Bill Mollison’s Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual. This book is expensive ($109 from www.permacultureactivist.net ) and not always easy to purchase so we don’t make it a required text. We do strongly encourage you to purchase it if you can, and read it. Much of our permaculture (PC) courses correspond to parts of this book.

 

Guild Teachers
The instructors in this course are not all trained teachers, though many of them have substantial background in the topics they teach. Permaculturists think that whatever one’s regular job might be, that everyone with adequate training needs to teach permaculture. No member of our Guild is a full time permaculture instructor. We do our best, but depend on you for helpful suggestions as to how to better.

There is an old saying about Texas weather—if you don’t like it, wait a few minutes. Because it is an integrating discipline, you are likely to be bored at times (but hopefully not annoyed) when we discuss topics you already know. If so, please wait a few minutes. We have never known a person to complete the full course hours without believing it was well worth the effort. Most believe it changed their lives.

 

Logistics
You will need maps and directions for classes that aren’t at Urban Harvest. Directions to Animal Farm are here. We strongly suggest that you car pool with other students or teachers to Animal Farm. The class immediately before a non-Urban Harvest session will discuss the logistics. Let us know well ahead if you will miss that class and need special arrangements or directions.

 

Field Trip Weather Issues
You will be provided at the first class with a phone number you can call if a field trip class has to be cancelled because of weather. It may be determined at the last minute that the class will need to be cancelled, but if we do cancel a class, we will know three hours before the class is scheduled to start. Since there is no practical way to reschedule such classes other than a raincheck for next year, cancellations will be rare. If you miss that class, you can take it for free the following year provided it is offered. Also keep in mind that Animal Farm, being further west, is much, much drier than Houston. Bring rain gear or cold gear though if there is any chance you might need it!