This Bi-lingual (English and Spanish) Two-Week Intensive Permaculture Design Course (PDC) is an opportunity to immerse yourself in the beautiful gardens of Sach’a Munay eco retreat with delicious food and a creative learning environment with internationally renowned permaculture teacher Penny Livingston-Stark, permaculture practicioner Adam Woodman, and special guests including indigenous farmers who will share with us their own permanent agriculture techniques.

This training provides multiple ways of presenting information from presentation and slide shows to storytelling and interactive group process. This course include hands-on experiential learning opportunities provided by experienced instructors.

This course is a powerful way to have a transformational experience, be nurtured with delicious meals while learning powerful tools to create resilient environments on all scales.

A globally recognized Permaculture Design Certificate, will be offered to all participants who complete the course and the design project.

This course, based on the classic permaculture curriculum, with founding principles and techniques developed by Bill Mollison and David Holgrem

includes classroom and/or hands-on activities in the following areas:

• Permaculture principles and ethics
• Reading the landscape
• Pattern and pattern application
• Water harvesting
• Swale building
• Zone and sector analysis
• Climate and micro climate strategies
• Mapping
• Land access
• Urban permaculture
• Community building
• Plant guilds
• Soil Carbon Sequestration and Biochar
• Food forests and agroforestry
• The design process, principles, strategies, and techniques
• Ancient andean agriculture
• Soil building and sheet mulching
• Pond management and ecology
• Earthworks and natural building
• Grey water systems
• Bioremediation
• Renewable energy systems
• Forest management
• Watershed management
• HazelSea Buckthorn
• Economy and Equity
• Group work on a conceptual design project

We provide a DVD workbook with excellent resources and reading material that we ask you to read as part of the coursework. In addition, we have an ongoing list of recommended reading that includes everything from foundational manuals by Bill Mollison to magazine articles on new applications of solar power. The list is not required reading for the course, but available to you as a resource as you continue your permaculture explorations.

Course Instructors

Penny Livingston-Stark will lead this educational journey.

Penny is internationally recognized as a prominent permaculture teacher, designer, and speaker. She holds a MS in Eco-Social Regeneration and a Diploma in Permaculture Design. Penny has been studying the Hermetic Tradtion of alchemy and herbal medicine making in Europe and the United States for 4 years.

Penny has been teaching internationally and working professionally in the land management, regenerative design, and permaculture development field for 25 years and has extensive experience in all phases of ecologically sound design and construction as well as the use of natural non-toxic building materials. She specializes in site planning and the design of resource-rich landscapes integrating, rainwater collection, edible and medicinal planting, spring development, pond and water systems, habitat development and watershed restoration for homes, co-housing communities, businesses, and diverse yield perennial farms.

With her husband James Stark, and in collaboration with Commonweal — a cancer health research and retreat center — Penny co-manages Commonweal Garden, a 17-acre organic and certified salmon-safe farm in Bolinas, California. In addition, Penny and James are stewarding and working to restore 200 acres of land in Trinity County, California.

Penny co-created the Ecological Design Program and its curriculum at the San Francisco Institute of Architecture, and she co-founded the West Marin Grower’s Group, the West Marin Farmer’s Market, and the Community Land Trust Association of Marin. Penny has also worked with the Marin County Community Development Agency and Planning Department to develop recommendations on sustainability for updating the Community Plan.

Penny is a founding member of the Natural Building Colloquium, a national consortium of professional natural builders, creating innovations in straw bale, cob, timberframe, light clay, natural non-toxic interior finishes and other methods using natural and bio-regionally appropriate materials for construction.

She has been featured in the following films: Symphony of the Soil by Lily Films and Deborah Koons Garcia, 2012: A Time for Change by Joao Amorim and Daniel Pinchbeck and Permaculture: The Growing Edge by Belili Films and Starhawk.

Assisting Penny, will be permaculutre practitioner and designer Adam Woodman. Adam holds a Bachelor of Horticulture (Burnley 2006), Permaculture design certificate (2007), and Cert IV in Permaculture (2012). In 2007 he spent a 3 month stint as an intern at the Regenerative design Institutes commonwheel garden in Bolinas, California and in 2011 completed the the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia 10 week internship under Geoff Lawton. He has run his own Permaculuture design and consulatancy business since 2012 and is currently living and working on permaculture projects in the Sacred valley Peru.

The Venue

Sach’a Munay (Love from the Ancient Forest) Sacred Valley Retreat Center is located at the base of sacred mountains Pitisuray and Sawasiray in Arin valley in the sacred valley of the Incas. Here you will see the native cultures (Quechua speaking) working the land as they have for centuries, with love and simplicity. Sach’a Munay has been designed to have the least possible impact on the surroundings eco system, maintaining a virtual non polluting operation. The center is eco-friendly, made from local materials. Sach’a Munay is run as a nonprofit will all profits going to support local community projects.

Food

Food will consist of 3 mainly vegetarian meals per day and a snack. All meals will use local and organic ingredients where possible.

For more on this course or to book. Please visit the cocreativepermaculture website or email [email protected]