If you're reading this message on the course information page, it means you can enroll immediately :)

Although we published the first set of instructional materials in late May, we realize that people come to permaculture at different points in their lives, so we permit enrollment until September 16th. What allows for this flexible enrollment window is a unique course structure: We’ve taken the best elements of a self-paced course and blended them with the most advantageous elements of a schedule-based course.

Here’s what this practically means: Like a self-paced course, you can enroll at any time of your choosing, as long as it is on or before September 16th, then work as quickly as you’d like to complete the course materials and Final Design Exercise by the last day of the course, January 31st, 2025.

You can, in principle, complete all the course materials in 9-10 weeks; the fact that we’ve spread out the publication of the materials across 18 weeks — and then given an additional 4 months to catch up on the materials and work on the Final Design Exercise — is intended to give you maximum flexibility. All in all, you have more than 8 months (!) to complete the course. 

At the same time, for those who appreciate a more defined structure, we’ve put together a suggested schedule and course timetable that you may choose to follow. This may help you feel that you are moving along at (roughly) the same pace as hundreds of your fellow classmates and colleagues. Some weeks, you may choose to slow down, others to speed up. No matter how fast or slow you go, you will always find others in your cohort who are working on the same materials that you are.

If you have any additional questions about this, please contact us. We’ll be happy to provide additional guidance about your specific circumstances. The main takeaway is that we’re giving all students 8 months to work on a course and Final Design Exercise that can be completed in less than half that time.

Once the instruction formally begins, we will release a block of instructional content every Friday. These instructional modules make up the heart of the course. We suggest that you use the subsequent 3-4 days to view the modules and post any questions in Discourse, our dedicated course discussion area. Our teaching assistants will monitor questions and answer these on a daily basis. Any questions that are particularly difficult, have wide appeal, or are especially interesting, Geoff will handle directly. He will note these questions, answer them, record the Q&A, and upload these to your student dashboard. This cycle of spending the first half of the week watching videos and asking questions, and the second half viewing the answers and posting any follow-ups, will repeat for the duration of the course across 18 weeks. The upshot is that you will have support on both a daily basis — via the teaching assistants, Geoff, and the private group community of your peers — as well as a weekly basis — via the video-based Q&A with Geoff.

As mentioned above, the online PDC is both self-paced and schedule-based: Self-paced in the sense that you can choose how fast or slow to go, and schedule-based in the sense that the schedule outlined represents a suggested pace so that most of the student body can move through the materials together in real-time, week by week. As for an estimated weekly commitment: Watching the videos, listening to the Q&As, and interacting with members of the online community, can all be done in as little as 4-5 hours per week; there are a few weeks when we publish a higher-than-average volume of instructional materials, but these are the exceptions to the rule. In previous cohorts, the overwhelming majority of our student community (software developers, at-home parents, professors, farmers, architects, students, retirees, and more) have been able to keep pace with the PDC while balancing their professional, family, and travel commitments. The 18-week content publication schedule, the two weeks of rest and catch-up, along with almost four additional months of continued course access and time allocated for FDE completion, together provide more than enough flexibility to accommodate a wide variety of schedules and needs.

The face-to-face PDC is a full-time intensive that is taught over just 9-12 days. Some who have taught an online PDC have tried to do it in as little as 6 weeks, but students invariably ask for more time. Based on Geoff’s 40+ years of experience, and having done it both online and offline, we’ve decided to pace the course at 18 weeks. We believe that anything much shorter than this is simply too fast for most people. Moving at this pace allows absorption of the materials and lays a solid foundation for all future permaculture work. The material is voluminous, dense, and takes time to assimilate; for this reason, we’re confident that the ideal learning sweet-spot is 18 weeks, inclusive of two one-week rest/catch-up periods peppered throughout.

After the 18 weeks of the course come to an end, we will grant you continued access to all the course materials, videos, PDFs, animations, and other instructional materials through January 31st, 2025 for you to complete your Final Design Exercise. If time beyond this is needed, additional tuition-based options to extend access will be presented just before the end of the course.

Yes: Your heart, attention, and any internet-enabled device (computer, iPad, phone, etc.) Chrome, Safari, and Edge all work splendidly well, as does Firefox once you clear your cache and update your browser and plug-ins. No farm, land, bulldozer, shovels or anything else of the sort needed :) If all you have is a windowsill, a little passion, and some imagination, you’re ready to get started.

The late Bill Mollison, Geoff's mentor and close friend, is widely considered the founder of permaculture. His Permaculture: A Designers Manual is the landmark textbook and serves as a guide for aspiring permaculturists. It is the framework for this course, and our 14 modules closely mirror the 14 chapters of the book. It is dense and often technical, and most people find that a well-structured course presented by an experienced instructor helps to properly unpack its contents.

Yes and no. Technically, you can go through the entire course without ever opening a page of the book. Geoff will reference specific pages, quotes, and diagrams from the PDM, but will always try to provide enough context so that you can follow the points being made without needing to have the book in front of you. Having said that, we strongly advise everyone to get a copy of the book. You can buy directly from Amazon or Tagari Publications. Shortly after the course formally begins, we will make every effort to provide all enrolled students with a link where you can purchase the PDM at a discounted rate, subject to Tagari's preferences.

To earn your Permaculture Design Certificate, you must complete a final project called the Final Design Exercise (FDE). No special technical skills or talents are required for this, and everything you need to complete this will be provided in the final portions of the course. Several years ago, we created something called the “FDE Flow,” a step-by-step process to help students complete their FDEs as efficiently and as fully as possible. For students who have gone through it, the FDE Flow has been an absolute game-changer, and it is included as part of your enrollment at no additional cost. The tool is so thorough and user-friendly that graduates of the course continue to use the FDE as a primary tool for their paid consulting engagements.

We’re confident that you’ll see the overwhelming value being provided, but if for whatever reason you give this a shot and feel that the course isn't a good fit for you, no problem: We have a 30-day, no-hassle, 100% refund policy. And anyone withdrawing from the course will continue enjoying free access to the Permaculture Circle.

Clicking on any of the enrollment buttons will take you to a secure payment page where you can complete your sign-up in less than 2 minutes. Simply follow the steps there (name, email, payment details), and you’re all set.

You’ll then be taken to a “thank you” message and suggested next steps. You’ll also receive an email with your login details; please save these details because you’ll use the same login information for all future courses you take with us.

That’s really up to you :) If all of this sounds like a good fit, scroll to one of the enrollment buttons and click to start your permaculture journey. If on the other hand you want to ask a couple of questions before jumping in, please click on the little chat button at the bottom right of your screen and we'll do our best to answer your question(s).