Looking for a Lifestyle that Regenerates this Planet?

Learn the principles + strategies that harmonize human needs while repairing ecosystems and reversing climate change

 

Do you realize that you can live on planet earth without destroying it and regenerate it while providing for your needs, your livelihood, and your community?

Learn how Permaculture provides a road map for doing so.

I WANT TO LEARN MORE!
THERE IS HOPE

You Can Live Beyond Sustainable without Sacrificing Time, Money, or Your Needs

Permaculture is like being given the operating manual for living on our beautiful blue planet including learning to:

  • Quickly grow nutrient dense food with little work and time.
  • Secure your water resources through rainwater and greywater.
  • Create jobs that repair the planet.
  • Build homes and buildings that heat and cool themselves.
  • Live the (beyond) sustainable life you’ve always dreamed of whether you have land or not

Yes, It Really Is Possible!

The irony of our situation is that the tools, technology, and ability to reverse climate change and environmental destruction are already available. In the Permaculture Design Course, you’ll learn how to finally take control of your ecological future.

ENROLL NOW

In The Next 6 Months, You Could…

  • Be growing a nutrient rich garden even with little or no land
  • Be working to regenerate ecosystems + sequester carbon
  • Begin building a resilient life for you and your family regardless of another pandemic, catastrophe, natural disaster, or economic down turn

With a foundation in ecological and systems thinking coupled with smart permaculture design, you'll be well on your way.

We will cover this and more in the Permaculture Design Course.

INTRODUCING

The Permaculture Design Course with Josh Robinson

Video Poster Image

If You Are Ready To Take Control of Your Ecological Future...

This 12-week Permaculture Design Course will teach you everything you need to know to start building the ecological + resilient life and future that you want to see for you and your family. You’ll learn:

  • How to design food, water, energy, building, and economic systems that are resilient and function like a healthy ecosystem
  • Tools, techniques, strategies, and principles to design holistic permaculture systems
  • How to strategize by harmonizing with ecosystems rather than working against them.

With a simple shift in your mindset and some smart ecological patterns and principles, you could start living the life of your dreams all the while restoring the planet's ecosystems.

What's Included In The Permaculture Design Course...

MODULE 1

Introduction to Permaculture

Permaculture is a whole systems design approach that can be utilized to harmonize human needs and ecology. You can use permaculture to not only design gardens, but buildings, energy systems, jobs, and communities. This module will cover:

  • Current state of the world
  • Permaculture ethics + principles
  • How holistic permaculture design creates resilience

You’ll finish this section with an understanding of systems thinking and the principles to design resilience in all aspects of your life.

MODULE 2

Permaculture Design Methodologies

The heart of permaculture is observation and integration. In these lessons you'll learn how to design like an ecosystem including:

  • Zone + sector analysis
  • Functional analysis
  • Our simplified Permaculture Design Process to get you going

You’ll finish this section with the tools to think and design holistic and resilient systems.

MODULE 3

Natural Patterns Understanding

Patterning is the three dimensional process of making connections over space and time. In these lessons, you will learn how life is patterned from the result of ecological function including:

  • The mathematical nature of nature
  • Ecological + cultural pattern literacy

In order to have ecological functional design systems, you need to become pattern literate. You’ll finish these lessons with the knowledge of working with natural and ecological patterns, forms, and connections.

MODULE 4

Understanding Climate Patterns

Where you live on this planet is defined by its unique climate; a relationship of temperature and moisture. Climates and microclimates are not random. In these lessons you will understand:

  • Factors and patterns that cause rain
  • Factors that determine temperatures everywhere in the world
  • How to read the climate where ever you are living or designing

You’ll finish these lessons knowing not only the patterns of the broad climates of the world from the tropics, temperate regions, to the drylands, but the unique design characteristics of them as well.

MODULE 5

Trees + Their Energy Interactions

Plants and particularly trees are continually interacting with their surroundings. In these lessons you will understand:

  • How trees and vegetation cause rainfall
  • How to design multifunctional windbreaks
  • The ways that trees modify and enhance ecosystems

At the end of this module, you will have a newfound respect for the plant world and an understanding of how to utilize vegetation to create rainfall and enhance microclimates.

MODULE 6

Designing for Water

Water is the lubricant of life. In these lessons we dive deep into the watery realm of designing water abundance including:

  • Passively harvesting rainfall using earthworks like basins, swales, brush + vegetation to slow spread and sink water
  • Designing a rainwater harvesting tank system including sizing and components
  • Learning how to double your water efficiency through reusing greywater from sinks, showers, and the washing machine

When complete, you will be able to calculate your water budget for any site and identify the most suitable strategies and techniques for designing water into the landscape.

MODULE 7

Living Soil Systems

Once we have "planted" the water, we can learn how to quickly build nutrient dense living soil to grow the healthiest and most disease resistant plants. In this module, you will understand:

  • The science behind living soil and how to manage for biology
  • Nutrient cycling with composting, worm castings, sheet mulching, huglekultur, compost teas, and more 

At the completion of these lessons, you will be able to take any soil and quickly turn it into a rich and chocolatey loam with ease. Your plants will thank you for putting this module into action.

MODULE 8

Plant Ecology + Food Systems

The living plant world can be seemingly complex with intricate connections between plants. These lessons, will build competency in not only growing your best garden, but also:

  • Many different strategies for building gardens beyond what you have been accustomed to
  • Building plant guilds and perennial food forests 
  • How to easily propagate plants from seed, cuttings, division, and more

After this module, not only will you save potentially thousands of dollars by doing your own propagation, but you will also learn how to design and build low maintenance food producing gardens that function like an ecosystem. By harmonizing with ecosystems, you the gardener gets to relax as you have designed in your fertility, nutrients, mulch, and water conserving features.

MODULE 9

Integrated Animal Systems

Along with plants, animals have important ecological roles in every ecosystem. In this module, you will learn:

  • How to reduce work by utilizing animals for food, fertility, and nutrient cycling
  • How to incorporate animals in any scale farm or garden
  • Allow each animal to express their inherent unique  "animalness"

Whether you have a tiny yard or a large farm, animal integration can benefit all ecosystems.

MODULE 10

Farm Scale Permaculture

Permaculture can be applied to the garden or scaled up to the larger farm scale. In this module, you will learn:

  • How Keyline Design can be used for large scale water and soil management
  • About agroforestry and other tree based practices can benefit farms

Even if you are not a "farmer," you will see the eye opening potential of farms to reverse climate change through the carbon sequestering aspect of building soil at scale as well as their ability to create diverse ecosystems.

MODULE 11

Aquaculture

Aquatic ecosystems are some of the most biologically diverse and productive systems on earth. In this module, you will learn:

  • How to mimic productive aquatic ecosystems
  • How to recreate a wetland through aquaponics
  • About building a natural swimming pool

Through these lessons, you will be eager to cultivate a water garden where appropriate.

MODULE 12

Bioremediation

In nature, there is not a concept for waste. That idea only exists in our heads. In this module, we will learn to transform "waste" into resources including:

  • Building, maintaining, and using a composting toilet to recycle humanure into a safe soil fertilizer
  • How to utilize plants and fungi (mushrooms) to clean up toxic land and water

These lessons will empower you to begin restoring land and water by partnering with the living world as we realize that there is no such thing as waste.

MODULE 13

Appropriate Technology

In an era of iPhones and Alexa, it can seem like we are moving into the realm of technological complexity. The reality is that we already have the "technology" for sustainable and regenerative tasks that support our local economies and communities. In this module, we will learn regenerative ways to:

  • Heat and cool your home
  • Cook and prepare food using the sun and solar products
  • Heat water
  • Produce electricity
  • Refrigeration + preservation
  • Pumping water

At the conclusion of these lessons, you will no longer worry about the grid going down.

MODULE 14

The Built Environment

Imagine a home or building that needs little or no heating and cooling, is built from non toxic materials, and will melt back into the earth at the end of its existence. In this module, we cover:

  • Passive solar design to heat and cool your home using the sun for free
  • Designing homes appropriate to the tropics, colder temperate regions, and the hot dryland climates of the world
  • Building with natural materials utilizing techniques like adobe bricks, cob, strawbale, wattle + daub, and more

Once you understand these lessons, you will be able to design a climate appropriate building anywhere in the world or find ways to retrofit your existing home to perform better. 

City Repair Project
MODULE 15

Social Permaculture

While the land design aspects of permaculture often get the attention, it can be argued that the people and social aspects of design are even more important. In these lessons, we will design for the ecology of society including:

  • Land access issues and community gardens
  • Building the sharing economy thorough resource sharing cooperatives
  • Transforming space into place through Placemaking

As this module wraps up, You will be able to apply the principles of permaculture to your current living situation as you find creative ways to save money and resources by working in collaboration.

City Repair Project
MODULE 16

Financial + Economic Permaculture

Many of us drawn to the green or environmental side of the world see our financial and economic systems as the culprit for many of the world's problems. While that may have merit, there are ways to work within the current models to transform them into systems that regenerate the planet while meeting your needs. In this module, we address designing financial and economic models that function with the resilience of ecosystems including:

  • Local and regional currencies and time banks
  • Broadening our ideas of wealth with the "8 forms of capital"
  • Finding or building jobs in the new green economy
  • Right livelihood
  • Building ecologies of businesses and jobs

As these lessons wrap up you will see the potential to leverage business to facilitate ecological change. These lessons will also get you out of the 9 to 5 rat race mentality as you design your livelihood to align with your ethics and values.

Optional Add On:

5 Days of Hands on Permaculture 

Learn on a real life working permaculture education center at Terra Corazón's farmstead located in beautiful Valley Center in Northern San Diego County's backcounty.

Onsite Camping Available

Connect with other peers and make connections with others after class

Experiential Learning

Build permaculture muscle memory as you gain the practical hands on skills to apply in your own life

Communal Wood Fired Dinners

On the weekend campouts, we break bread and share homemade sourdough pizza in our wood fired cob oven

Hands-On Dates:

All hands on days meet from 9am to 4:30pm with an hour break for lunch.

  • March 23-24, 2024 (Camping Available)
  • April 13-14, 2024 (Camping Available)
  • May 5th, 2024

Over 100+ Video Lessons

Our course video lessons and modules walk you through permaculture design from start to finish.

Live Q+A Sessions

Have questions? Get answers and insight into them on our live bi-weekly sessions. Every other Wednesday 6pm PST

Private Messaging Group

Connect with your classmates, peers, colleagues, and instructors on a private platform. Share pictures, comments, and resources in this group

One Year of Course Access

We cover a lot of ground and sometimes you want time to review the material again. That is why we are offering to keep this available to you for over a year and possibly longer depending on our website hosting capabilities.

Bonus: Google Earth Pro for Permaculture Design

Google Earth Pro is a powerful free program that can help you with design. We are including a module or mini course to share the tricks of the trade on how to use Google Earth Pro for permaculture design.

A $199 value

Bonus: Rainwater Harvesting Calculator

Calculating rainfall falling on different parts of your property like roofs and driveways can be tedious. That is why we have built out a Rainwater Harvesting Spreadsheet to use in your life or business that makes it quick to do the calculations.

A $75 value

Permaculture Design Certificate

Earn your Permaculture Design Certificate which is based on the internationally recognized curriculum set forth by Bill Mollison

This Permaculture Design Course Is For You If...

  • You want affordable nutritious food and you are tired of struggling in the garden
  • You want to not only live lightly on the land, but leave it better
  • You want to build a regenerative life where you are right now whether you have land or not
  • You dream of a job in the emerging fields of sustainability, restoration, and ecological living
  • You want a road map of how to design your regenerative and resilient lifestyle
YES, I WANT IN!
NICE TO MEET YOU

I'm Josh Robinson

I was always frustrated with learning all about environmental problems, but never actually being shown how I, as one person, could change that. In 2001, that changed for me as I discovered permaculture. 

Once I became infected with permaculture, I couldn't go back to my old life. Since then I have started and co-founded 4 permaculture based businesses that have provided my livelihood for over 20 years. During that time, I have planted 1000's of trees, harvested millions of gallons of rainwater and greywater, and I have taught thousands of others to do the same. 

I use what I've learned to help people just like you find their ecological calling. I’ll show you step by step how to apply permaculture in your own life, garden, farm, or business.

"The Permaculture Design Course (PDC) course given by Josh Robinson and his associates is one of the most intellectually stimulating experiences I have ever had."

-Manuel Engelhorn

"Taking my PDC with Josh Robinson was transformative. His years of hands-on experience and depth of knowledge made this an honest course; his teaching style is compassionate and relaxed, so all of the diverse students felt engaged."

- Diane Kennedy

Finch Frolic Farm

"It's a course that will change your life in the best possible way as it did for me! Since taking the course, I see the world in a new more organized light consisting of patterns and systems and I decided to pursue permaculture professionally."

- Chris Meador

Permasystems

"You can solve all of the problems of the world in a garden."

-Geoff Lawton

Course Schedule

Our 12 week Permaculture Design Certificate course begins March 2nd, 2024.

  • Week 1: March 2nd, 2024 10am PST- Live Webinar + Introductions- Modules 1-2
  • Week 2: March 9th, 2024- Release of Modules 3,4,5
  • Week 3: March 16th, 2024- Release of Module 6
  • Week 4: March 23rd, 2024- Release of Module 7
  • Week 5: March 30th, 2024- Release of Module 8
  • Week 6: April 6th, 2024- Release of Modules 9,10,11
  • Week 7: April 13th, 2024- Release of Modules 12-13
  • Week 8: April 20th, 2024- Release of Module 14
  • Week 9: April 27th, 2024- Release of Modules 15-16
  • Week 10: May 4th, 2024- Design Project Work Week
  • Week 11: May 11th, 2024- Design Project Work Week
  • Week 12: May 18th, 2024-10am PST- Live Webinar + Student Design Presentations

Live Question and Answer Sessions:

Every Other Wednesday at 6pm PST starting March 13th.

Hands-On Dates:

All hands on days meet from 9am to 4:30pm with an hour break for lunch.

  • March 23-24, 2024 (Camping Available)
  • April 13-14, 2024 (Camping Available)
  • May 5th, 2024

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GET STARTED TODAY!

The Permaculture Design Course

Permaculture Course Only- Payment Plan

$275

3 Monthly Payments

  • Full 72 Hour PDC Curriculum with over 100+ Video Lessons in 16 Modules ($1,500 value)
  • Bi-weekly live Q+A sessions ($299 value)
  • Private class messaging group ($75 value)
  • One year of course access
  • Permaculture Design Certificate upon completion
  • Bonus: Google Earth Pro for Permaculture Design Mini-course ($199 value)
  • Bonus: Rainwater Harvesting Calculator ($75 value)
REGISTER NOW

Permaculture Course Only

$697

A value of $2,148

  • Full 72 Hour PDC Curriculum with over 100+ Video Lessons in 16 Modules ($1,500 value)
  • Bi-weekly live Q+A sessions ($299 value)
  • Private class messaging group ($75 value)
  • One year of course access
  • Permaculture Design Certificate upon completion
  • Bonus: Google Earth Pro for Permaculture Design Mini-course ($199 value)
  • Bonus: Rainwater Harvesting Calculator ($75 value)
REGISTER NOW

Permaculture Course With 5 Days of Hands On Training

$1,197

A value of $2,847

  • Full 72 Hour PDC Curriculum with over 100+ Video Lessons in 16 Modules ($1,500 value)
  • 5 Days of hands on learning at our Permaculture Farmstead ($699 value)
  • Bi-weekly live Q+A sessions ($299 value)
  • Private class messaging group ($75 value)
  • One year of course access
  • Permaculture Design Certificate upon completion
  • Bonus: Google Earth Pro for Permaculture Design Mini-course ($199 value)
  • Bonus: Rainwater Harvesting Calculator ($75 value)
REGISTER NOW
14-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE

If you aren’t completely satisfied with the Permaculture Design Course, let us know within the first 14-days from the start of the course for a full refund. Just show that you have worked through the first two weeks of material and there will be no questions asked.

Frequently Asked Questions