TERRA PERMA PERMACULTURE DESIGN COURSE (PDC)
Bookings are now open for our Winter 2022 Course.
Running Monday to Friday between July 25th and August 5th.
(Click here to go straight to the booking page)
- DUE TO CANCELLATIONS, THERE'S NOW 2 SPOTS AVAILABLE! -
Please note that this will be the only Terra Perma PDC for 2022.
The February 2022 course has been postponed due to WA border opening / COVID concerns.
(We generally respond via email within 48hrs so if you have not heard from us please
check your Spam folder for our reply email or give Charles a ring 0466 633 275)
After 7 years teaching in Perth, Terra Perma have now been running Pemberton-based PDC's in this beautiful corner of the South West for the past 3 years. The next PDC to be held in Pemberton will run from July 25th to August 5th 2022.
The two week course will be all you've come to expect from the Terra Perma Team, ecological system and Permaculture by the bucketful and our usual practical, engaging, logical, respectful and highly organised learning environments.
Please note that although the location is rural, the content will cover all PDC requirements which addresses urban, small scale and broad scale applications with the weighting of time / practical activities adjusted to meet the needs and interests of the group. It will therefore be relevant to all design contexts.
Thanks in advance for considering booking with us and get in touch "Contact Us" form or Charles mobile 0466633275 if you have any further queries.
Regarding accommodation, if you want an independent holiday type stay, there are many options and we encourage you to look around - the Pemberton Visitor Centre is a great place to start. However, if you are looking for a more affordable $30-$60 a night accommodation option please get in touch so we can help with student shared accommodation options.
Best Regards,
Jolene and Charles
The Terra Perma Team
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The two week course will be all you've come to expect from the Terra Perma Team, ecological system and Permaculture by the bucketful and our usual practical, engaging, logical, respectful and highly organised learning environments.
Please note that although the location is rural, the content will cover all PDC requirements which addresses urban, small scale and broad scale applications with the weighting of time / practical activities adjusted to meet the needs and interests of the group. It will therefore be relevant to all design contexts.
Thanks in advance for considering booking with us and get in touch "Contact Us" form or Charles mobile 0466633275 if you have any further queries.
Regarding accommodation, if you want an independent holiday type stay, there are many options and we encourage you to look around - the Pemberton Visitor Centre is a great place to start. However, if you are looking for a more affordable $30-$60 a night accommodation option please get in touch so we can help with student shared accommodation options.
Best Regards,
Jolene and Charles
The Terra Perma Team
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Terra Perma PDC 10 day full time Monday July 25th to Friday August 5th + Recap day*
Typical hours are 9:30 - 17:30 (Monday to Friday) Saturday 30th and Sunday 31st in the middle will be time off with no course content. *Recap Day - TBC by the group maximum number availability, and if you cant make that individual presentation via a zoom conference. Terra Perma Design educators Charles and Jolene, with the help of guest educators, run a full time Permaculture Design Course (72hr, 2 week course + recap / design presentation day). Take control of your future and be the change you want to see in the world. Permaculture thinking and design creates a harmony of human and nature's needs while creating richly productive systems. Permaculture's founder Bill Mollison maintains, "The problems of the world are becoming increasingly complex but the answers remain embarrassingly simple." With two presenters facilitating all lessons and activities, we can effectively address all the needs of the group and provide a very diverse experience base from which to educate. Having more than one presenter also offers more opportunities to gel with a teacher and more opportunities to chat in break times rather than waiting for time with one teacher. Additional presenters will depend on course numbers and the topic specific guest presenter availability. We pride ourselves on creating a practical, engaging, logical, respectful and organised learning environment. You'll find it quite a technical course and, whilst we do lots of walking discussions, activities and visits to design/ example sites, there will be significant classroom based learning. As long as this suits your learning style, then you are guaranteed of receiving way too much information rather than being left wanting more. You are encouraged to ask any questions at any time throughout the course - your questions will be the same as your peers! Through this course you will become part of the permaculture family. We’re here to support each other in our journeys, we are all peers in learning with nature the ever present teaching and inspiration. The course certificate will be awarded on the completion and mentored review of a draft Permaculture design for a location of the student's choosing. In response to feedback, a bonus day has been added to this course. This day will be dedicated to this review process through discussions with teachers and peers. The 'presentation day' is scheduled about one month after the PDC to enable the digestion and application of the class and practical material in a methodical manner to a specific design space. Where students are unable to complete their draft in time for the review or are unable to attend (in person or electronically), an alternate meeting should be arranged within 6 months of the course's final class session to obtain certification. 
Course Timings
July 25th - August 5th -10 day course + Recap day Course hours will typically be 9:30 - 5:30 including 1 hour of combined breaks. Saturday 30th and Sunday 31st in the middle will be time off with no course content.However there may be after hours and in between days activities which are optional, but likely highly beneficial. The Recap day will be arranged for a later date and a discussion will be held during the course to try to accommodate as many of the attendee's availability preferences as possible. This day also serves to reinforce the commitment Terra Perma has for supporting its students beyond the completion of the class content. Location The course will run from various locations in Pemberton with tours to locations farther a-field. Closer to the time the details of accommodation, food and other logistics options will be provided to assist with budget and comfort requirements. Field trips will be included in the course timetable and transport will be arranged. We're very excited about the opportunities available down here and its very tricky to narrow them down to fit within the education framework - hence the potential for "after hours / day off" activities. There is so much to see and talk about. More information to come on this. Presenters Charles and Jolene will be the core team with Charles specialising in teaching and Jolene split between teaching and the logistics / food. Guest teachers will be present for appropriate topics to ensure as many personal experiences / teaching methods are presented throughout the course as possible. We are planning to increase our guest presenter contributions and will be hoping to incorporate more educators including some PDC graduates to provide the experience of presenting PDC topics or discussing their own experiences and hence grow the Permaculture educator pool. 
Food
We love to support the community and so have recently trialled a fundraiser for a local kids sports club for the provision of home made sweet and savoury morning and afternoon teas. This worked brilliantly so we'll be looking to continue this. Jolene will also ensure there are gluten free options available (due to our own dietary requirements), however any other dietary needs will need to be self catered. Some local fresh and processed produce may be seasonally available. We also provide tea and coffee facilities (yes we like proper coffee too!) of course. The food is always a highlight of the course... unless you're dieting :). Lunch is BYO, however there are shops/eateries just minutes away with a great range of healthy and exciting food options. Cooking/kitchen facilities will be available for heating, serving and washing depending on locations, but we'll discuss this closer to the time. Cost Course Cost is $1600. ($1400 early bird price for deposits paid by 1st June 2022). Deposit of $400 is required upon registration. Includes:
The length and immersion of the topics (trial by ordeal) brings our PDC groups very close together creating the most important and significant 'benefit' of a doing a PDC. You get peers at the same point in life, and become part of Terra Perma's extended family with its life long Permie support service. Yes, after this course you will be part of the family and we are here to support each other in our journeys. Having a group of approachable, knowledgeable friends attempting the same life changes is actually the most important thing to come out of your PDC experience, and something online courses can't offer. Peer support is very important when so many around us are not interested in being a change agent. 
Why do a PDC with Terra Perma ? Terra Perma have had 10 years and 15 PDC's to refine our course from regurgitating permaculture curriculum, to actually working permaculture thinking into what people need to know about nature and want to know about living in Perth and rural WA. We are making ecological common sense common again. We teach everyone to design with Permaculture's toolkit, how much detail you learn on top of that will depend on where you are starting from. With new ways of thinking and patterning like nature you will look at any situation and start designing a better one, it will be your new default setting. Apologies in advance :). You will leave this course with new eyes, brains and opportunities - just have a look around the WA Permaculture community and see what all the amazing Terra Perma grads (and, in turn, their students) are doing! As most things are learned by doing, you can have access to all the combined wisdom, ingenuity and ideas of Charles, Jolene and others who have learned from both the failure and success of doing. We're keen to test everything that's worth trying and find out what works and what does not! This is not something that can be read in books and, while you will need to learn this all yourself, hearing our experiences will save you a lot of time. Many poster-child Permaculture techniques are not suitable for the WA climate/soil, so if one simply copies from the Eastern States and overseas Permaculture books, then failure and disappointment is highly likely. Over the duration of the course you will learn how to design and adapt these techniques to our unique set of conditions, so you can avoid blindly copying situation specific ideas and fads (e.g. herb spirals, swales, corrugated iron raised beds, elevated hugelkultur, aquaponics, vertical gardens, etc). As you will learn, in the right situation these are all great techniques, however most are prone to failure in Perth's conditions if not intelligently and situationally adapted. So you can be assured that we offer a localised, accredited, and design- based PDC. Land development groups, community gardens, community associations, local councils, rural land managers and private businesses choose us as their ecological, sustainable educator due to our reliability and return on investment. Permaculture design and ecological thinking is universal and global in its application. With us, not only will you specialise in urban and rural design in WA, but gain the ecological know how and design processes to apply it anywhere in the world, at any point in your life, and on any scale. That is the true beauty of Permaculture. |
Cost
Course Cost is $1600. ($1400 early bird price for deposits paid by 1st June). Deposit of $400 is required upon registration. Includes:
Student Designs after previous Terra Perma Permaculture Design Courses
What you will learn on a Terra Perma PDC.
Nature is the teacher, we are just opening your eyes and justifying the time you will need to allow for this new learning journey.
Still Not Sure ? Here is the Table of Contents example of the ever-evolving Design book we have made for you. And an example chapter so you can see the detail. Plus Jolene had previously been busily writing a blog about an example PDC to walk you through the topics day by day (ongoing) - go have a read. This blog will be restarting soon. These topics are a blend of the traditional PDC topics, but with a new 2022's agenda, a WA based rationalisation and an attendees' needs-based assessment dictating the time and detail spent on each topic. Much has changed since Mollison and Holmgren wrote the required Permaculture Design Certificate topic list and Design Manual. The whole world needs saving now - the transition movement has come a long way, legal financial changes have occurred, global food security demands have resulted in land and water grabbing, holistic farming and regenerative agriculture is on the rise, and there is an increasing and unavoidable urbanisation. 
If your thinking - That all sounds tricky I am not sure if I am up to it...
No prior experience is necessary to do the PDC, but it can help to have started some background reading and found an excuse to get your hands in the soil. Simple information sheets have been provided to introduce some of the design ideas. Please browse our resources and free workshop notes here, and items are available from our TP library which are available for loan to make sure that the content suits your needs. We advise against buying books at this point. Once you have our PDC manual, you won't need to buy many of the 'permaculture' books as the foundation information is all very similar. Save your money for special interest texts and reference books later. We like to tailor the course towards the group's needs to assist all to achieve their goals. So consider this and make sure you let us know why you're looking to do the PDC, any past experiences & your future goals when you sign up.
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If you cannot make it down our way, or the timing does not suit, never fear, there are some other great opportunities being offered which might suit your needs. These links represent, to the best of our knowledge what else is on offer in WA:
1) The Fair Harvest full time PDC held in Margaret River.
2) Perth's Permaculture Educators Alliance are running several full and part time PDCs.
As PDC's come up within the Perth and south west WA regions, they should be added to the information issued by PermacultureWest, so we'd recommend you kept an eye on either their Facebook page or check with the providers who are all listed here on the PermacultureWest website.
If you cannot make it down our way, or the timing does not suit, never fear, there are some other great opportunities being offered which might suit your needs. These links represent, to the best of our knowledge what else is on offer in WA:
1) The Fair Harvest full time PDC held in Margaret River.
2) Perth's Permaculture Educators Alliance are running several full and part time PDCs.
As PDC's come up within the Perth and south west WA regions, they should be added to the information issued by PermacultureWest, so we'd recommend you kept an eye on either their Facebook page or check with the providers who are all listed here on the PermacultureWest website.
