PDC Course Overview

What Does a PDC Curriculum Cover?

The variety of subjects covered by a PDC are diverse! The first four weekends are a broad overview of design principles, strategies and techniques. The 5 day campout will dive deeper into practical applications and community building. All together, the Whatcom PDC constitutes the 72+ Hour Permaculture Design Certification Course as originally designed by Permaculture co-founder, Bill Mollison. Students who complete the two-week curriculum earn the internationally recognized Permaculture Design Consultant Certification. To date, thousands of permaculture designers worldwide are certified through PDCs, and comprising a global network of educators and ecological activists. PDC grades around the world have brought permaculture design thinking into the full gambit of modern careers and living environments. They represent groups of committed people working together to change the way we view and design our landscapes and communities.

View the rough course schedule here. The order of topics in a course may change due to the presence of guest instructors, and emphasis on certain subjects may shift due to the needs and focus of the participants, such as urban or rural residents, ect. This course will not make you an expert in any of the individual subjects covered, although, in many cases we go into considerable depth. The point of the course is to introduce you to the relationships and synergies in the systems that make up everyday life. In a sense, permaculture creates an ecology made up of the many tools and concepts used to design sustainable communities. You will learn about tools and how to use them, and when. The PDC will continually demonstrate connections between you subjects leaving you with a whole systems design strategy. In a sense, permaculture creates an ecology made up of the many tools and concepts used to design sustainable communities.

Permaculture Design Process camp out week:

Building on the foundations presented in the first four weekends, knowledge and skills will be expanded and tied together. Leading to a final real life design exercise, mapping and placing elements within a holistic design.

• Building
• Solar Design
• Water management
• Ecosystem restoration
• Climatic considerations
• Eco-Village
• Community Structures
• Urban Design
• Aquaculture
• Animal Husbandry
• Alternative Governance

Design groups will present to the class for critique and comment.

Optional on-site Camping with lunch and dinner during the last five days at Inspiration Farm. This will provide opportunities to immerse in the design process and partake in after hour activities.

Let us know if you would like help arranging local off-site lodging if camping is not a viable option for you.

Who Would Benefit From Attending This Course?

This course teaches you to observe at various levels  such as cycles in nature, movements in history, practices across cultures, and patterns in social behavior. It also increase one’s awareness to learn how to interact harmoniously with nature to achieve your goals. The Permaculture Design Course jump starts the learning curve on all these fronts. Permaculture uses ecological principles to design sustainable human communities that are harmoniously woven into the environment, with the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. Design professionals can add new qualifications to their resumes and offer improved services to their clients. Their designs tend to use fewer resources, work more efficiently, and are easier to maintain. Most participants find the course life-changing, and they form powerful new viewpoints and enhanced social networks.

• – Homeowners, gardeners, and farmers learn to increase the value and productivity of their property and to create home and land environments that better support their own needs as well as nature’s.
• –  Real estate, construction, and development professionals are able to better address the public’s growing concern for the environment and to reduce resource use and impacts.
• –  Educators learn to integrate permaculture design into their curriculum in ways that have been proven to raise student performance.
• –  Planners and public officials find holistic solutions to land-use and resource issues, and will identify and solve bottlenecks and impediments to implementing their programs.
• –  Energy, water, and waste-systems workers will learn holistic management strategies for integrating their projects into the larger community.

The Permaculture Design Course is one of the few educational systems in the world of its size that allows so much freedom to students and teachers alike. The course material and presentation is structured to address different learning styles. Each topic expands and deepens our understanding of the previous topics, so the knowledge and understanding of the student is gradually built up. The permaculture design course teaches whole-systems thinking. Systems thinking focuses on the relationships among the parts, the features that emerge from these relationships.

Design Exercises help bring this into application and make corrections. Just as the course material is vast in its size and scope, the course presentation extends beyond the classroom teaching, design exercises and audio-visual sessions. Permaculture flows over to the meals shared, nature walks/garden visits, learning new practical skills and checking theoretical learning with experiments.

What does a Permaculture Design Certificate enable you to do?

With this certificate a graduate may confidently use the word ‘permaculture’ in the promotion of their work or business world wide. This might include:

• Use the term Permaculture in your business
• Permaculture design consulting
• Landscaping and implementation of design
• Teaching and facilitating groups.
• Working with aid organizations
• Managing a farm or other garden projects, large or small