.
.

A Tucson tradition!

Spring 2017 Permaculture Design Course

February 4 & 5,
February 11 & 12,
February 25 & 26,
March 11 & 12, and
March 18 & 19
Class generally runs from 9 am to 5:30 pm each day.
The cost for the course is $725 plus an optional class book fee of $42 for a copy of Introduction to Permaculture by Bill Mollison. Also highly recommended are Brad Lancaster’s Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volumes 1 and 2.
A limited number of partial scholarships are available.
For the last twenty years this course has been full with a waiting list, so early registration is encouraged. To give a high quality educational experience, we limit the size of the class to eighteen participants. Contact Dan, the course registrar, at dorsey@dakotacom.net or 520-624-8030 to register and/or to receive the syllabus and detailed FAQs for the course. Some scholarship funds are available.
This Permaculture certification course covers all aspects of sustainable design with a Southwest drylands flavor, including a balance of hands-on experience, classroom time, and design practicum. Dynamic exercises encourage pattern recognition, noticing the links between the plants and animals, climate, and land forms that make up natural ecosystems. The course focuses on dryland communities with a strong urban and semi-rural emphasis, addressing individual site and neighborhood “problems” such as stormwater flooding. Students learn to read the landscape, to map and analyze energies flowing through a site, and to develop integrated designs for sustainable systems. The weekend format of the course makes it easier for people who hold a week day job to attend and promotes better integration of the course material into daily life. The course closely follows the standard 72-hour format developed by Bill Mollison and others.
Course topics include agroforestry, appropriate technology, building design, design principles and patterning, site analysis, drylands-gardening principles, ecosystem restoration, philosophy and ethics of Permaculture, regenerative community economics, soils and erosion control, village and community design, water harvesting, invisible structures, and many other topics.
The classroom site is in the Central Tucson area and at other Permaculture sites in the Tucson area. Much of the class is held outdoors. This course is taught and facilitated by Dan Dorsey, Brad Lancaster, and Barbara Rose, each with two decades of Permaculture experience, as well as our many extraordinary associate SPG teachers. See the profiles for the core team teachers here.  See pictures from previous courses and workshops here.