"Permaculture is the conscious design and maintenance of cultivated ecosystems which have the diversity, stability & resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape, people & appropriate technologies, providing good, shelter, energy & other needs in a sustainable way. Permaculture is a philosophy and an approach to land use which works with natural rhythms & patterns, weaving together the elements of micro climate, annual & perennial plants, animals, water & soil management, & human needs into intricately connected & productive communities"
Bill Mollison
Permaculture Design Certificate
The online Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) programme provides a comprehensive analysis of regenerative design and its application to creating a foodscape that provides an abundance of organic and nutrient dense food.
The course is broken into 6 core topics (follow the links below for further information on each) that explore the foundation and application of permaculture design. These topics are explored within an interactive online learning platform - where you will have the opportunity to collaborate with other learners to extend and deepen your learning. Each of these topics have associated assessment tasks to support your learning.
- Regenerative Design
- Healthy Ecosystems
- Topography & Water
- Creating Micro Climates
- Building Soil
- Social Permaculture
These topics are applied to creating a design portfolio for how to transform your property into a regenerative foodscape (follow link below for further details). Completion of the design portfolio and assessment tasks within the core topics is required to complete the PDC and obtain your certificate.
Additional topics are provided for reference - to provide resources to support you in achieving the best outcomes in your design portfolio (see details in links below). These topics are optional - but are presented within an interactive online platform to support your learning and collaborate with others. These topics explore the details of permaculture design within different landscape systems and how to harness strategy, mindset, technology, financial management and more - to achieve your best results.
The goal of the PDC programme is to develop a new way of seeing the world - often called the 'permaculture lens'. This new perspective brings to life the productive possibilities of a landscape and how the patterns seen in nature can be harnessed to create regenerative outcomes within diverse and inter-connected foodscapes.
You explore this within the context of developing a detailed site design and implementation strategy for creating a regenerative foodscape on your property (or one you are familiar with).
The course is broken into 6 core topics (follow the links below for further information on each) that explore the foundation and application of permaculture design. These topics are explored within an interactive online learning platform - where you will have the opportunity to collaborate with other learners to extend and deepen your learning. Each of these topics have associated assessment tasks to support your learning.
- Regenerative Design
- Healthy Ecosystems
- Topography & Water
- Creating Micro Climates
- Building Soil
- Social Permaculture
These topics are applied to creating a design portfolio for how to transform your property into a regenerative foodscape (follow link below for further details). Completion of the design portfolio and assessment tasks within the core topics is required to complete the PDC and obtain your certificate.
Additional topics are provided for reference - to provide resources to support you in achieving the best outcomes in your design portfolio (see details in links below). These topics are optional - but are presented within an interactive online platform to support your learning and collaborate with others. These topics explore the details of permaculture design within different landscape systems and how to harness strategy, mindset, technology, financial management and more - to achieve your best results.
The goal of the PDC programme is to develop a new way of seeing the world - often called the 'permaculture lens'. This new perspective brings to life the productive possibilities of a landscape and how the patterns seen in nature can be harnessed to create regenerative outcomes within diverse and inter-connected foodscapes.
You explore this within the context of developing a detailed site design and implementation strategy for creating a regenerative foodscape on your property (or one you are familiar with).
The programme is heavily dependent upon online involvement in forums - where you share reflections upon the content explored within the topics and how that applies to your design project. You therefore benefit from an engaged and collaborative online learning community - in addition to the rich and detailed learning materials.
This course typically takes 6 months to complete - if spending approximately 2 hours each week to complete.
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What is Permaculture
The Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) is an internationally recognised curriculum based on the pioneering work of Bill Mollison, that outlines the integration of a diverse range of topics from climate, soil, topography, ecosystems, design and mapping to understand the functioning of regenerative systems.
The PDC taught through Regenpreneur is endorsed by Permaculture in New Zealand and provides a gateway to a career in permaculture design, creating an abundant and balanced food-producing system, understanding the design of regenerative systems and provides a self-empowering life philosophy with the tools and techniques to create a positive difference in the world.
Our courses explore the elements fundamental to the design of a permaculture systems and how this is expressed within different types of systems. The resources within the courses are based around a project that applies concepts directly to measurable outcomes - that support you in achieving your goals.
The term permaculture, meaning "permanent agriculture" was coined in the 1970's by two Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren working jointly at the Environmental Design School in Tasmania on developing a systems-thinking approach to developing a model of sustainable agriculture. The original focus of permaculture was developing a beneficial assembly of plants and animals in relation to human settlements, mostly aimed towards household and community self-reliance, and perhaps as a "commercial endeavour" only arising from a surplus from the system. This original focus has broadened to encompass more aspects of social permaculture, business structures, strategies to acquire land and as a systems thinking tool that can applied to strengthen a wide variety of endeavours.
Permaculture is a design system that encompasses both "permanent agriculture" and "permanent culture." It recognizes, first, that all living systems are organized around energy flows. It teaches people to analyse existing energy flows (sun, rain, money, human energy) through such a system (a garden, a household, a business). Then it teaches them to position and interconnect all the elements in the system (whether existing or desired) in beneficial relationship to each other and to those energy flows. When correctly designed such a system will, like a natural ecosystem, become increasingly diverse and self-sustaining.
All permaculture design is based on three ethics: Care of the earth (because all living things have intrinsic worth); care of the people; and reinvest all surplus, whether it be information, money, or labour, to support the first two ethics.
A distinctive feature of permaculture designs is that each element included in a system has multiple benefits, that each resource is supplied in multiple ways for resiliency and that each element is inter-connected with other elements. In this way a permaculture design imitates some of the functional complexity found within an ecosystem and by so doing becomes more stables, requires less input and has a more diverse output that conventional agricultural systems.