Midwest Permaculture

72-Hr. Design Certification Course
8-Day Training with 8 Pre-course Webinars
August 22-29, 2009, Madison, Wisconsin
Focus: Suburban/Urban Permaculture

Training Includes: - 8 Webinars - Guided Self-Study - Class Instruction - Site Tours - Design Work & - Hands-on Project   PIctured: Students will visit this mini chicken-coop / greenhouse made mostly out of recycled materials.

The emphasis of this course:
   1. Transforming hard cityscapes into beautiful food production.
      2. Designing for a healthy & authentic community to emerge.
         3. Transforming our back yards, city lots, roof tops and                   commons areas into social, ecological,
                                                         and economical juggernauts.
              4. Working smarter and reducing fossil fuel requirements.
                 5. Creating long term security for ourselves, our                                       neighborhoods and for those who follow.

Please Note: As always, the full-design course curriculum will be covered to provide students with their permaculture PDC certification.

Course Features and Objectives
The Wisconsin Youth Company and...
     ....the Madison Area Permaculture Guild, Join Hands

This permaculture design course is being hosted by the Wisconsin Youth Company (WYC) and organized by the Madison Area Permaculture Guild (MAPG). WYC has been providing community based, after school children services for 35 years giving youngsters a place to grow, learn, explore and find a safe, human haven. MAPG is a recently formed collective of passionate permaculturists who found one another through the organizational effort of one of Midwest Permaculture's graduate students, Kate Heiber-Cobb (more below).

We live in a culture that marginalizes people. In a suburban/urban environment where there is little natural space and too much noise, unhealthy stimulation and stress, our ability and desire to create authentic and sustainable community gets clouded.

Objective of the Course: In this permaculture design certification course we will be exploring how one can redesign the suburban/urban environment to naturally stimulate the creation of authentic community while simultaneously caring for our own physical selves and personal spaces (homes, apartments, etc.).

Design Project:   As part of this objective we will create a permaculture design for our course host. WYC has a wide open, sloping field next to their center that is being under utilized. They are imagining creating a natural space that will provide children with:  - a wide variety of natural foods  - an ecologically beautiful space  - an educational opportunity  - a hand in revitalizing the landscape.

Also on their grounds is a natural amphitheater which is under utilized. Does this space hold a greater opportunity to help stimulate community? Within the permaculture design created, certain parameters will need to be addressed such as up-front costs for implementation of a design and concerns over long term maintenance costs.

Within a Permaculture design, we want wastes to become resources, productivity and yields to increase, work to be minimized and the restoration of the environment to occur. The visions and related design challenges dealt with on this property are the same factors that thousands of spaces in the suburban/urban landscape must concern themselves with as well. The lessons learned at this course can be applied almost anywhere.

Site Tours

While in Madison, we want to take our students to several locations that are implementing different aspects of permaculture design. We know that seeing is often believing. Students will not only get a chance to see what these projects are but in most cases, they will talk with the person who is doing the implementation... the actual creation and work.

Besides the chicken-coop and mini-greenhouse pictured above, some of the other stops will include:

The First Unitarian Society's green building addition with green roofs, rainwater catchments, low energy demand design and more.

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Troy Gardens, a unique development consisting of 31-acres of urban property. Troy Gardens integrates mixed-income green-built housing, community gardens, an organic farm, and restored prairie and woodlands.

“When I think of projects in Madison that I am most proud of and I think deserve recognition for innovation on a national scale, I think first of Troy Gardens.”
Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, City of Madison     ...read more.

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Kate Heiber-Cobb's backyard permaculture transformation including her herb spiral and mandala keyhole bed (pictured) and her rain-water catchment system. This simply designed rain-water system harvests and sends rooftop rain from rain-barrels... to constructed wetland... to growing beds.

Freshly Designed - Spring 2008

Late Summer 2008

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Kate's friend, Jody's, traditional suburban home with many permaculture features. We'll take a good look at her winter hardy kiwi growing over the front porch keeping it cool in the summer while providing fruit, a full front yard herb and flower garden, and grape vines growing along the side of her home. In her backyard she has a very cool drain system from her driveway to a VERY large and beautifully established rain garden.  She also has a home built Cob Oven and growing beds.  She's been working on her yard 15 years.

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Also included during the week will be one or two other stops. and a couple of guest teachers from the Madison area who will share their unique experiences in implementing permaculture design into their own lives.

Instructors

Certifying Instructor - Wayne Weiseman

Permaculturists Wayne Weiseman brings his years of design and teaching experience to this certification course. Wayne is register by Bill Mollison's Permaculture Institute of Australia to teach the full permaculture design course and to grant certification.     Read more...

Wayne resides in Carbondale, Illinois
Contact Wayne via Email

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Guest Instructor and Course Host - Kate Heiber-Cobb
Suburban/Urban Permaculture Designer, Educator, Organizer
Kate is doing the heavy lifting of organizing this training along with the assistance of the Madison Area Permaculture Guild.

About Kate...   - Holds a Permaculture Design Course Certification                      (PDC) with Midwest Permaculture   - Holds an Advance PDC Certification                            (also with Midwest Permaculture)   - Founder of Madison Area Permaculture Guild   - Owner of Sustainability on Stilts LLC- her own             permaculture design and consulting service.

Kate also has years of experience in community organizing, group facilitation and small business development, management and administration.

In her permaculture business, Kate consults with individuals, businesses and organizations on how they might apply permaculture principles and design to their upcoming projects. In her personal life, she and her husband Tom are going about transforming their traditional suburban home into a beautiful and productive site.

As a teacher, Kate shares her real life experience from being a relative permaculture novice to becoming an active and accomplished permaculture designer with her own business. She helps make the broad and sometime overwhelming subject of permaculture understandable, practical and doable. As she tells her students, "Hey, if I can do this... so can you!"

Kate is available for consulting and public presentations through her business, Sustainability on Stilts LLC.

Kate and Tom reside in Madison, Wisconsin
Contact Kate via Email

Additional Details About the Course

This full design course actually begins for each student when they register. With registration comes a welcome email that contains attached handouts to read from the course instructors and with-in a week or so, the arrival of the design course text book via US Mail.

Course Textbook    Included with Registration 'Earth User's Guide to Permaculture' by Rosemary Morrow This gem of a text, shipped to students upon registration, is written by Rosemary Morrow, an Australian, that has taught permaculture around the world for decades. The book is straightforward and loaded with illustrations, depth and substance. It covers theory and also focuses on the practical aspects of how to implement permaculture design. This book is a must read for the serious permaculturist and is a requirement for students of our design certification courses.

Webinars:
This year's live webinars were hosted as part of the first design course held in May. All students receive links to 6 of these webinars hosted by lead instructor Wayne Weiseman which covers a large part of the course text and gives students a great foundational understanding of permaculture in preparation for their on-site training.

Also included with this course are two additional webinars that are live.

Purchase Webinars & Self-Study Features Separately If one is seriously interested in learning about permaculture but cannot commit to a certification course, the webinars and self-study features of our design courses can be enjoyed as stand alone experiences. Students learn an amazing amount about permaculture and design just by joining in on these aspects of a course. Webinar / Self-Study Package: $195      - Bill Wilson's ' Introduction to Permaculture' webinar                (Includes permission to use teaching slides)      - The 6 Wayne Weiseman 'Foundations of Permaculture' webinars from 2009      - A copy of the course text Earth User's Guide to Permaculture                     (Along with reading assignments as they relate to webinars)      - A copy of the 150-Permaculture Self-Study Questions                (These solidify your permaculture comprehension and understanding)      - 24 Handouts from Bill and Wayne to highlight certain subjects Additional Benefit... Receive Full Credit Toward Future Course Should a student decide to take a Midwest Permaculture Design Certification Course in the future, the $195 is fully credited toward their registration fee. This credit will be carried forward for up to 3 years. When a students takes a future course they get to participate in the new round of webinars as well.   Click Here to Purchase Webinars and Self-Study & Receive Full Credit Towards Design Certification Course   "I won't be able to listen live tonight but will be very interested to listen to the recording later. I've LOVED these webinars. Thank you so much for offering the webinar-only option. I plan to take a certification class within the next couple of years, but these webinars allowed me to really bring together the self-study and in-the-dirt projects I've been working on. THANKS!" Leigh W. (5-13-09) Arkansas http://ozarksalive.org/larrapin/

On-Site Portion of the Course

Location / Host Site
Wisconsin Youth Company, Inc.
1201 McKenna Blvd., Madison, WI 53719 (see map)

Daily Schedule
The on-site portion of the course begins on Saturday the 22nd at 1:00pm and runs until noon the following Saturday, August 29th. We will have class most days from 8a.m. through 6p.m. with good breaks for lunch. The exception to this will be on three different evenings where scheduled activities will take us into the evening hours. As we have shared, this is an intensive training so we ask students to come ready to study, work and learn. There will be plenty of fun too.

Meals:
Daily lunches are provided as part of your course registration (including three dinners). Meals will be made from mostly organic sources and will be purchased from local providers if it is available. There will be a vegetarian option with all meals. If you have a fairly restricted diet you might be asked to provide some of your own foods.

Lodging & Camping
Beside the many local motels available around Madison, our course host, Kate, will be looking into more local and low cost options for our out-of-town students. Renting a low cost room from one of the students living in the Madison area will be investigated. Camping in their back yards might be an option as well. That way several students can commute together to the course as well.

Your Course Welcome Packet
6-7 weeks before the on-site portion of the course begins, every student receives a welcome packet (by email) which includes a list of things to bring as well as more details about your course, your webinar classes, and your fellow students.

Certification
Students who complete this design course will receive a 'Certification of Completion' which allows one to use the copyrighted word 'permaculture' in the promotion of their work or business. Graduates may also do teaching, offering workshops, lectures and seminars. However, offering full design certification courses and awarding certification to others requires further training and documentation. Click here for more on certification.

Course Fee & Registration:
The price for this course is $1200.00.  

Group Registrations - Save $100
2 or more may register as a group and receive a $100 discount each. We've had friends, family members or couples register together and in the weeks before the course, ended up bringing in several more friends, each saving $100.

Call Becky for either more information or to set up a group (815-256-2215).

	Registration      Option 1 Click here to register on-line. We take MasterCard, Discover and Visa.       Option 2 Call Becky to register over the phone at 815-256-2215 with credit card or personal check.      Option 3 Click below for a registration form which you may print out, fill out, and snail-mail in with your personal check.         Word Document (.doc)        - or -        .PDF File Form

Down-Payment / Course Reservation
Our simple e-commerce page is not set-up to handle partial or down-payments. If making a partial payment is an important factor to your ability to participate, please call Becky at 815-256-2215 to work out these arrangements.

Low Risk Cancellation and Refund Policy
Should a student have to cancel their enrollment in the course up to 30-days before the on-site portion of the course begins, there is a full refund less $250. Student retains access to webinars, keeps the course handouts and text book, and receives a full $195 credit towards any future Midwest Permaculture design certification course.

If a student cancels within the 30-day period before the course there will be a full refund less $350 and the student still receives a $195 credit towards our design courses. The credit is good for up to three years.

There are no refunds for cancellations or for withdrawals once the course begins. However, in certain circumstances, we may extend partial credit towards a future design course.

Already A Permaculture Design Course Graduate?
We offer a 33% discount to students who have already received their PDC Certification from another recognized course (from anywhere in the world) who wish to take one of our courses as a refresher. Please email for details.

Still Have Questions?
You are welcome to email Becky at Becky@MidwestPermaculture.com or call 815-256-2215.