This Permaculture certification course covers many aspects of design with a Southwest dry-lands flavor, including a balance of classroom time, permaculture principles reinforcement, design practicum, and some hands-on experience. Dynamic exercises encourage pattern recognition, noticing the links between plants, animals, climate, and landforms 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 storm water 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. By the end of the course students will have developed and presented a comprehensive permaculture design on a site of their choosing. Our course closely follows the standard 72-hour format developed by Bill Mollison and others.

Course topics include 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, agroforestry, appropriate technology, building design, and many other topics.

The classroom is a collection of multiple sites in the Greater Phoenix area. This course is taught and facilitated by Don Titmus & Janis Norton, with a team of permaculture-trained presenters to help round out the course.