Traditionally the creation of curriculum for a 72-hour Permaculture Design Certificate course is based on the sequence of topics delineated in Bill Mollison’s tome, Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual. There is still wisdom in utilizing this template, but after many years experience teaching the course, I have reworked my approach based on student feedback and further study and implementation.
In order to balance a mix of lecture, media and hands-on training, and in order that the PDC reflects the actual work that we will do in the field following the course, here are some considerations based on how an accomplished Permaculture designer works with a client, and personally at the homesite.
There are six essential templates that I refer to in my work: the scale of permanence, initially described by PA Yeomans of Australia, sector analysis as per Mollison in the Designer’s Manual, the zone system, principles and methodologies identified through the years (including David Holmgren’s 12 points), and needs, products, behaviors and intrinsic characteristics of each element included in a comprehensive design.
The flow of a consultation is as follows: inventory and assessment-design-implementation.
All curricula for a course are relegated to this flow: we practice as we learn. Typical of professional landscape architects and architects, the flow from assessment to design crosses into many professions when dealing with problem solving, configuring systems and design.
Like detectives we piece together, incrementally through our observations in the field, the resources available at the site and delineate the patterns already present. In this way we can then make the least change for the greatest affect. As we design and imprint fresh patterns on the landscape, we proceed to augment what is already there and implement an integral and sound ecology into a property.
All of the changes we make in the landscape refer back to care of earth, care of people and fair share (benevolent distribution of goods and resources).
Developing curriculum by teaching solid fundamentals, with an eye toward building infrastructural integrity, the student from any walk of life or institution will be able to take the leap into the world of “fixing” the degradation perpetrated on this earth for the last hundred and fifty years.
All in all, the key to the process of Permaculture design lies in rigorous, thorough and ongoing observation. Bill Mollison has said to take one year observing a site: protracted observation. We say one year, every year, every moment, beyond seven generations into infinity. The Permaculture curriculum must reflect this and the skills to get there must be taught and practiced meticulously.