Permaculture Design Certificate

This training offers the opportunity to develop professional skills and provides valuable education to enhance your current career or prepare you for your next venture or vocation. It is one of the few permaculture design trainings that match the schedule and tuition to the busy lives of urban professionals and full-time students.

There are many other wonderful PDC trainings in the region, but if you don't have time to take two weeks off and would prefer to learn permaculture skills in the city that you live in and work on designs that can be implemented in your city (and learn design principles and methods that can be applied anywhere), then this might be the permaculture certificate training for you.

Through a mix of classroom discussion time, small group work and hands-on activities, we will explore methods of designing and establishing regenerative communities and economies. We visit and participate at several permaculture projects here in San Francisco and the Bay Area, observing and interacting with Permaculture principles in practice.

Some people take the training just to share the experience with an enthusiastic group of like-minded community and meet new friends. Join us and help build a healthy and happy community based on a common vision of harmony with nature and each other.

Permaculture Defined

Permaculture is about designing ecological human habitats and production systems. It is a land use and community building system which strives for the harmonious integration of human dwellings, microclimate, annual and perennial plants, animals, soils, and water into stable, productive communities.

The focus is not on these elements themselves, but rather on the relationships created among them by the way we place them in the landscape. This synergy is further enhanced by mimicking patterns found in nature.

It has been successfully used around the world to maximize food production, regenerate springs, cool homes without air conditioning, transform lives and reduce pollution, to name a few.

The essence of Permaculture is summed up by 3 ethics:

Care of the Earth
Care of the People
Share the Surplus

Urban Permaculture

We start with the standardized Permaculture curriculum and add onto it insights and strategies for applying Permaculture to the urban setting. This lengthens the course to a degree, we do not omit any of the standard materials.

Over 50% of the world's population now lives in urban centers and the number is growing. Adopting strategies to meet our needs in a sane and ethical way is critical. In this course, we will learn how to design those strategies.

Active Design Course

In this design course, participants will be working in teams producing a design for an actual project here in San Francisco. Throughout the course, we will share with you the tools and strategies required to complete the design which culminates in the final presentation at the completion of the course.  Review the course syllabus here.

Costs and Considerations

The cost for the course is $850 and run approximately 85 hours over 16 sessions. We offer work trade and payment plans when nedded, please see the this page for more details.

Nobody is turned away due to lack of funds or ability to do work. If for any reason you are not able to pay for the course in part or in full and cannot work, please contact us and we will do our best to make accomodations.

The schedule is outlined below. We offer this training in this format once each season (4 times a year).

Inevitably one or more trainees misses a session due to unforeseen circumstances or other plans. If you need to miss more than one or two sessions, please contact us. Students are offered the chance to attend any classes they miss during future seasons.

Course Schedule

The course is designed to fit into busy urban lives, we meet in the evenings on Wednesday and our all-day sessions are on Saturday.

Wednesday Sessions: 6:30PM to 9:30PM

Saturday Sessions: 9:00AM to 5:00PM

Link to Calendar