Spring Permaculture Design Course – Tucson

The 29th Annual Permaculture Design Course! It’s a Tucson tradition!

The five weekend course dates for 2024 are Feb. 3rd/4th; Feb. 10th/11th; Feb. 24th/25th; March 9th/10th; and March 16th/17th. Registration opens on September 1st. E-mail Dan at dandorsey292@gmail.com to receive the syllabus and FAQs. Check out a short YouTube video of the 1st weekend of the course here. 

Permaculture Design Course Participants – Spring 2024 below

Permaculture Design Course Participants – Spring 2023 below 

Permaculture Design Course Participants – Spring 2022

Permaculture Design Course Participants – Spring 2021

Permaculture Design Course Participants – Spring 2020

Tucson PDC 2017 Group Picture websizePermaculture Design Course Participants – Spring 2019

Class generally runs from 9AM to 5:30 PM each day. The cost for the course is $875. There is an OPTIONAL textbook – Introduction to Permaculture by Bill Mollison for supplemental reading. You can complete the course with the 160 page notebook, which is supplied as part of the course fee. Also highly recommended  is Brad Lancaster’s Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands Vol 1. A limited number of partial scholarships are available for the course plus no interest payment schedules.

For the last 23 years this course has been full with a waiting list, so early registration is encouraged. To give a high quality educational experience, we limit the size of the class to eighteen participants. Contact Dan, the course registrar, at dandorsey292@gmail.com to receive more info on the course.

This Permaculture certification course covers all aspects of sustainable design with a Southwest dry lands flavor, including a balance of hands on experience, classroom time, and design practicum. Dynamic exercises encourage pattern recognition, noticing the links between plants and animals, climate, and landforms that make up natural ecosystems. The course focuses on dry land communities with a strong urban, suburban, and semi-rural emphasis, addressing individual site and neighborhood “problems”,  such as storm water flooding. Students learn to read the landscape, to map and analyze energies flowing through a site, and to develop integrated designs for sustainable systems. The weekend format of the course makes it easier for people who hold a week day job to attend and promotes better integration of the course material into daily life. Our course follows the format developed by Bill Mollison and others.

Course topics include agroforestry, appropriate technology, building design, design principles and patterning, site analysis, drylands gardening principles, ecosystem restoration, philosophy and ethics of Permaculture, regenerative community economics, soils and erosion control, village and community design, water harvesting, invisible structures, and many other topics.  The main classroom site is located a mile and a half north of downtown Tucson, and we will visit other Permaculture sites in the Tucson area. Most of the class is held outdoors. This course is taught and facilitated by Dan Dorsey and Barbara Rose, each with thirty years of Permaculture experience, as well as our younger experienced teachers Erick Meza and Emma Stahl-Wert. Also Brad Lancaster will lead a tour of his place during the course. See the profiles for the core teachers here.  See pictures from previous design courses and one day workshops  here.