Advanced Permaculture Design

This 2.5 day course is designed for people who’ve earned their Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) and who want to: be more confident in designing in general, want to take the next step to professional permaculture design or want to set up a permaculture business.

This next level of mentoring will be done in a relaxed, rural, small group setting with Dan Palmer, an experienced professional designer who is also a terrific human being and extraordinary teacher.

Friday night, the group will discuss where they want more clarity, information, instruction and confidence, e.g. working with clients, pre-visit preparation, how to price goods and services, resolving tricky situations in positive ways, mapping, how to make your designs look really good, etc, etc.

Then Saturday and Sunday it’s a full on 20 hours of theory, designing, critiquing, coaching roleplay, group exercises, fabulous food, witty conversation and connecting with other interesting people in your NZ permaculture community.

Book here

What you will learn

• Setting a Holistic Framework – for both you, and your clients
• The basics of getting started as a professional designer
• What to charge, and how to charge it
• Preparing for effective site visits
• The on-site design process
• The studio design phase – from sketch/ideas to completion
• Learning and using design software
• Implementing the design – how to manage or refer this effectively, for a great result
• Permaculture Business – structures and management techniques that work for everyone

Students can bring examples of their own permaculture design work for feedback and discussion.

Your teacher – Dan Palmer

Dan Palmer and friend

Dan Palmer, Director of Very Edible Gardens, has two Permaculture Design Certificates, a BA and Masters Degree in Social Science, and a PhD in Systems Thinking.

His teachers and mentors include permaculture founders Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, as well as Darren Doherty, Geoff Lawton, Rick Coleman, and Rosemary Morrow, the last of whom he spent seven months teaching and implementing permaculture in Ethiopia and Uganda.

He has completed an Advanced Permaculture course with David Holmgren and short courses with Elaine Ingham, Rowan Reid, Joel Salatin, Kirk Gadzia (on holistic management) and Graeme George. Co-founder of the permablitz movement, Dan contributes regularly to permaculture publications and courses in Australia and New Zealand.

When and where

Plenty Permaculture Education Centre

The course will be held on 25-27 September at the Plenty Permaculture Education Centre in Whakamarama.

Schedule:
Friday 25 – 7:15pm-9pm
Saturday 26 – 8:30am-9pm
Sunday 27 – 9am-5pm

Download the full schedule here

Bring a plate to share for Saturday lunch. An optional dinner on Saturday night and Sunday lunch can be purchased.

Investment

$270 for the design course.
Optional Saturday dinner and Sunday lunch are an extra $12.50 each.

Here’s what past participants had to say

“Dan is a wonderful educator: amazingly honest, supremely generous and intensely knowledgeable. The course gave me a fantastic understanding of how to be a professional designer. We covered the practicalities of each part of the design process really well. I can more clearly visualise myself as a designer now, and it was such a blurry vision before.”

“The workshop was exactly what i needed to get myself over some humps I had been stuck behind, both in my design process as well as in my life more generally. I felt afterwards that i knew how to find my next steps forward, which was a major breakthrough!”

“A fantastic and motivating workshop which considers all aspects of professional permaculture design. Dan’s teaching style is fluid, fast (when it needs to be), and inclusive. Hightly recommended for budding designers.”