The Permaculture Master Plan – Permaculture Centres Worldwide

Aid Projects, Community Projects, Courses/Workshops, Demonstration Sites, Education Centres — by Craig Mackintosh

Imagine a world of peace, health and low-carbon prosperity. Well, we’re going beyond imagination, and are working on full implementation. It’s our aim. Watch (and share) the clip below to get an idea of what we mean.

The answers to the world’s woes – waning energy supplies, depleted and contaminated soils and water, reduced biodiversity, the dismantling of communities, etc. – are all there. We know how to get the job done, we know how to restore natural abundance where before was only desolation. But, we can get the job done a great deal faster with your help!

There are many ways you can contribute:

1. Donate, knowing your contribution is being put to work using the ‘teach a man to fish’ principle. Rather than endless aid campaigns that ignore root causes, we seek to solve problems at source.
2. Get involved! Take a Permaculture Design Course, where you’ll discover that you can be a part of the solution to current world problems.
3. Spread the word. Share this post with your family and friends. Follow our and other permaculture sites. Find out about permaculture groups in your area.
4. Reduce the environmental impact of your life, improve your economic security and increase the health and vitality of yourself and your family by transforming your back yard.

Permaculture is a rapidly growing movement – a science of sustainable design systems for all human need. Don’t get left behind!

26 Comments »

• This is very exciting. Your locations are exciting too. I wonder whether you have interest in doing another North American site. There are permaculturists working on an Ojibwe reservation in northern Minnesota. Though I haven’t been there yet, I want to support them. I would be delighted to help make the connection if this is an option.

  Comment by Shodo Spring — June 30, 2008 @ 7:48 am

• Hi Shado Spring, the Permaculture Research Institute USA, the newly formed sister nonprofit to PRI Australia, is interested in MN rez projects. I, am a director, along with Geoff Lawton, for PRI-USA. Please email me at permacultureusa@gmail.com asap. I live in Minnesota.

  Comment by Nichole Ross — July 1, 2008 @ 1:55 am

• I’m digging the plan and want to help out in North America as well. I’m a designer living in Iowa and wish to get linked up with other people currently working on big projects. I’ve been apart of small workshops and “Introductions to Permaculture” but I feel I need more experience to take my impact the next level. Food prices are waking people up and new ideas of low cost, natural building are catching on as well. Just graduated college and am open to anything, need any help in Minnesota? Also, is there a national headquarters in the USA? Where can an Iowan go during the winter months to learn new skills? All the best, Kyle.

  Comment by Kyle Sieck — July 4, 2008 @ 12:21 am

• Wonderful development of a global network of practicing permaculture facilities in different bioregions. These regional facilities can serve as clearinghouses for teaching/learning resources pertinent to the bioregions. The permaculture centres worldwide master plan is indeed an exciting and excellent step towards solutions needed now. Bravo!!

  Our Global Environmental Management Education Center (GEM) at U. Wisconsin-Stevens Point has conducted three PDC courses and one keyline design training activity with the help of Geoff and Nadia Lawton and Darren Doherty. GEM staff are planning to offer the PDC again in summer 2009. We are happy to connect and interact with the Minnesota permaculture effort for cold climate applications. Fun and fabulous!

  Comment by Victor Phillips — July 18, 2008 @ 1:12 am

• Hello,

  What I can do suggestion #1 – “Donate”. Is this sustainable. Why not make the money to apply to these issues? think outside the square . . . or perhaps in it by preparing a business plan to generate the funds to get the job done.

  I am very concerned about the very idea of “solutions”. After co-teaching the first and PDC courses in the Amazon I published an article (My Bungle in the Jungle – PC Quarterly Magazine). I have now found that involving people in discovering their own solutions is much more sustanable and with much greater outcomes.

  I am on a different tack which has allowed me recently to secure 500 square kilometres of Amazon rainforest to transfer to its resident comunity of 800 and make a profit to carry forward in to the next project.

  No donations. No solutions. Just applying sound business principle to vital issues to generate the restorative economy . . . the biggest opportunity you may never even heard of. You will.

  C’ya,
  Cymon Fjell

  Comment by Cymon Fjell — September 7, 2008 @ 9:52 pm

• hey cymon, do u have a website. what is this different track u are on?

  camelia

  Comment by camelia — September 12, 2008 @ 4:44 pm

• Could someone get this post to Geoff Lawton?

  My partner and I want to support the roll out of Permaculture Centres around the world as outlined in GL’s video.

  We want to donate via direct debit on a monthly basis (we are Australian residents). We don’t do credit cards or PayPal.

  We previously donated to charities operating in developing countries but we have become disenchanted with their failure to achieve enduring improvement.

  We have switched our donation focus to micro-finance and social entrepreneur initiatives. The self sustaining nature of the programme GL described fits our criteria.

  Comment by James — October 14, 2008 @ 4:15 pm

• Hi, Your projects are amazing. I am quite impressed with what I see. What do you have that would help in a High Cold Desert, as in Utah, in the Great Basin. A plant list would be extremely helpful. Also my land is over 600 feet of alluvial granular fill. Water loss through absorption is as bad or worse than loss from evaporation.

  Comment by David Remkes — October 20, 2008 @ 10:46 am

• Hello to Camelia and partner,

  I am an Australian citizen (was for years a resident) and my project is one of those listed on the worldwide masterplan for permaculture sites. It is called the Tamalalou Guinea Site.
  I am working in a community setting in Guinea, West Africa, and have the land and the will, with an extended Guinean family, to build a housing prototype and training centre for sustainable housing, permaculture and other sustainable health necessities (such as water catchment and composting toilets). We are certainly looking for funding to begin. If you have any interest in a project in Africa, please contact me through Geoff Lawton.
  Thank-you, Mardi

  Comment by Mardi Kendall — November 3, 2008 @ 9:19 pm

• Hello,
  I’m a Permaculture Deisgner and Teacher here in the Pacific NW where we’ve lost over 87% of the Chill Temperate Rainforest. Our organization – Dancing Spirits Permaculture – is actively developing community and homestead sites here as Permaculture Design projects and workshops. We’d like to be one of your official centers in the network you are proposing, though we are
  not seeking need based funding. We are trying to convert “first-world” citizens to a sustainable, permaculture lifestyle while repairing/reforesting our own local rainforest as a food and medicine forest. Anyone interested can contact us through the design-consultancy http://www.panearthdesigns.com
  Blessings & Balance
  Bruce Weiskotten for Dancing Spirits Permaculture

  Comment by Bruce Weiskotten — November 4, 2008 @ 3:52 am

• Hello, i’m a journalism student, working on my final paper. Im member of the Permacultural Net on Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil and im interested in knowing witch year the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia began. I’d be glad to recieve your answer as soon as possible, so i dont loose this important fact on my research on Permaculture’s story.
  Thank you in advance,
  Mari

  Comment by Mariana Monteiro — November 17, 2008 @ 8:13 am

• Hi Mariana
  we first began in 1997.

  Comment by Geoff Lawton — November 17, 2008 @ 5:40 pm

• I live North of Los Angeles in Topanga Canyon on 20 acres arid, dry hillside.
  I have been interested in permaculture for a long time, and would like to know if there is a permaculture center nearby ?

  Comment by Anne-Christine von Wetter — January 3, 2009 @ 6:23 am

• Hi Anne-Christine
  contact Owen Hablutzel oweniii@ca.rr.com he is a director of PRIUSA living in LA.

  Comment by Geoff Lawton — January 8, 2009 @ 2:00 am

• I am actively developing a series of outreach tools for my community in the mountains of Northern California. Took the Permaculture Design Course at OAEC in Sept/Oct. ‘08, with Brock and Kendall. I missed the field trip to your place nearby.
  I am very interested in finding and linking up with support mechanisms to help me with my efforts: Dunsmuir Community Compost Project (est. 3/08), Permaculture Kitchen Garden series (1/09-5/09 – have had the first with 31 participants who are now very vested in continuing their education); working with local schools (Dunsmuir) to establish school food gardens/forests.
  This is my passion!!!! It took me to find permaculture at age 54 to realize this.
  My dream is to get the 25 acres adjoining my 1.5 acres and turn it into a permaculture oasis, producing food for the community, education and community cohesiveness. Can you help me?

  Comment by Wendy Crist — January 29, 2009 @ 4:31 am

• ps: I write a gardening column for the local papers: Weed, Mt. Shasta and Dunsmuir, so my outreach has grown over the 10 years I’ve been writing and is now quite successful.
  I also recently had published a letter to the editor of Organic Gardening, challenging his suggestion that GMO’s and Organic gardening could work together (see Feb/Mar ‘09 issue).

  Comment by Wendy Crist — January 29, 2009 @ 4:39 am

• Im thrilled to have found your site, i will enjoy and learn form all your information…
  I have recently purchased 20 + acres of land in the Western Desert of Egypt in the Bahariya Oasis, The land there is still pure and the air is fresh and clean,,,I’m getting ready to build a small village and begin my own sustainable project…I’m fortunate our property has electricity, as getting wind power here has proved difficult so far…I can get all the plans and ideas for my project on line….But I’m building in the arid-desert…any one with similar projects are asked to write for networking and advice, I’m all ears! Id like to know of any forums planned in Egypt again?
  Good vibes to ALL those working out there…!
  hebajoan at Gmail

  Comment by Joan Barnes — February 7, 2009 @ 10:21 pm

• This looks like a very useful initiative. I am located in Suriname and very interested in sustainable economy for my country. Not many people are into this and examples are needed. Are you interested in working with people in Suriname and how do we have to go about it? We had just started a small working group in order to identify the options, when I discovered this site. Ours is a tropical rain climate, we have fertile soil in the coastal area. about 80% of the country is still rainforest but we have started to take it down…

  Comment by J. Simons — February 26, 2009 @ 5:59 am

• Hi
  Just wanting more info as we are in the process of planning our garden…i live in Tasmania, Australia.
  Kelly Darcy

  Comment by Kelly Darcy — March 19, 2009 @ 5:55 am

• Hola.
  Lamentablemente no hablo, ni escribo muy bien en ingles, asi que uso mi idioma de nacimiento el español. vivo en la patagonia Argentina en un pueblo llamado el Bolson, donde hace cerca de 5 años venimos trabajando en el desarrollo de la permacultura. tenemos un sueño que es ser participes de la gestacion de muchos centros de pemacultura en patagonia, estamos trabajando para esto hace ya 4 años. hemos logrado sostener un pequeño lugar de demostracion y enseñanza, vemos crecer junto a nosotros una comunidad que busca la sustentabilidad y que sueña y cree que somos parte de un movimiento conciente de cambio, la labor que nos reune es inetensa y muy sacrificada, queremos ser parte de este sueño mundial de permacultura, porque creemos que somos capaces de reverdecer la tierra y los corazones, educando y mostrando, ayudando y siendo consecuentes.
  Necesitamos ayuda, en asesorias, tecnologias y economia. Nuestro gran desafio es mostrar que podemos ser sustentables como centro de permacultura. Desde nuestros inicios venimos ofreciendo Cursos de diseño, Talleres de construccion en tierra, de semillas, alimentacion natural y baños secos. etc.
  Porfavor si lo que he visto y leido en su paguina es real, permitanos ser parte de esto y ayudar para ayudarnos en este sueño que es permacultura patagonica.
  Muchas gracias
  Saludos Fraternos
  Paulina Avila

  Comment by Paulina Avila — April 27, 2009 @ 3:19 am

• we have a beautiful piece of land along the snowy river and the funds to create a large permaculture garden
  if anyone would be interested in running such a project please contact me at clive@loveand abundance.org

  Comment by clive — May 1, 2009 @ 11:23 pm

• Hi,

  I’m an australian living in the Netherlands where I am studying for a degree in archtecture and urbanism at Delft Technical University. My dream is to design sustainable cities. At the moment I am working on a design for an urban plan where I am trying to weave permaculture into urban scale and work with density. I am also using what I have learned about social and cultural ecologies and trying to marry this to permaculture zones.

  I would be very grateful if you could suggest any projects which may have had or have a similar ambition. Any ideas or suggestions are also very welcome.

  Thanks and keep up the wonderful work,

  Brigitte

  Comment by Brigitte O' Regan — May 11, 2009 @ 10:32 am

• Geoff – The following was written 1/29/09. I mistakenly thought I was talking to Eric Olsen. My exuberance of the earlier writing has not diminished, though I have learned a lot: working with groups, city govt, etc. The pc class is nearly finished, with great success. The compost project is burgeoning. The City where I live (2000 souls) is assisting us with legal issues: insurance, lease, water, signage.
  I still am searching for financial resources to obtain the 25 acres I spoke of. The owners, my neighbors are 94 and have worked the land sustainably for 40 some years. I would like to preserve this legacy and build on it: Sustainable Living Center.
  I admire your work immensely! Hope you might have some links for me to pursue for financial resources.
  1/29/09 writing:
  “I am actively developing a series of outreach tools for my community in the mountains of Northern California. Took the Permaculture Design Course at OAEC in Sept/Oct. ‘08, with Brock and Kendall. I missed the field trip to your place nearby.
  I am very interested in finding and linking up with support mechanisms to help me with my efforts: Dunsmuir Community Compost Project (est. 3/08), Permaculture Kitchen Garden series (1/09-5/09 – have had the first with 31 participants who are now very vested in continuing their education); working with local schools (Dunsmuir) to establish school food gardens/forests.
  This is my passion!!!! It took me to find permaculture at age 54 to realize this.
  My dream is to get the 25 acres adjoining my 1.5 acres and turn it into a permaculture oasis, producing food for the community, education and community cohesiveness. Can you help me?”

  Comment by Wendy Crist — May 12, 2009 @ 2:30 am

• Hi, I am living in Namibia (Southern Africa) and am very interested in permaculture. I am the manager of an NGO, the Philadelphia Foundation for Orphans. This is a community program in a rural African setting, focussing on community care of orphans and our aim is sustainability. I only recently came across the term ‘Permaculture”, and am very very interested in this. We work and live in an area along a beautifull river with good soil. In spite of the good soil and abundance of water and sunshine, people are very poor in this area, because they are not able to use resources optimal. I could not yet find a permaculture contact or organisation in Namibia. Does anyone know of any such contact? Or is anyone interested to work with our organisation as a volunteer, developing permaculture at local schools and villages? Thanks! Ellen

  Comment by Ellen van den Berg — May 14, 2009 @ 5:01 am

• Hi,

  I’m an expat Australian also living in the Netherlands. Brigitte, would you like to get in touch with me? How has your research unfolded?

  Look forward to hearing from you.

  HT

  Comment by Helen Thomson — May 30, 2009 @ 5:57 am

• I have been aware of Bill Mollison, permaculture, and the “revolution” that it represents, since soon after my studies at the University of California, in The College of Natural Resources; studying conservation studies and Political Economy Of Natural Resources in the late 1980’s. I long ago came to the conclusion that it’s the only realistic hope for a humanistic form of agriculture that benefits human health, community and simultaneously steers mankind clear of the dangerously anthropocentric and “petro-centric” forms of agriculture that have been espoused by “Agriclture INC.” Worldwide. I, still, seriously seek to find permanent employment in permacultural related fields and permacultural projects to espouse. In the U.S., so far, it has been difficult, especially if one was ahead of his time and is already 55. Anything such as this in the U.S. during the Reagan, Bush, and Bush(2) administrations was generally considered psychobable and many thoughtful educated indeviduals have had to lay low, so to speak. Times are changing in our favor, I think, and I only hope that I can spend the remainder of my productive life activelly involved with it’s spread and success. I also whole heartedly invite and encourage the young of this world to do what was not politically correct for me to do. The writing is now “on the wall” re. centrallized, mechanized, and homogenized (i.e. Monocropping) agriculture. The loss of nutrients in foods and it’s consequent effect upon health costs, not to mention the tragic loss of our topsoils is more than tragic: it’s suicide. I have profound hope that we can pull ourselves out of the “nose-dive” that the “powers that be” are taking us into. Curtis Metzgar

  Comment by Curtis Metzgar — June 21, 2009 @ 12:55 pm

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Posted on: June 26, 2008