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The course follows the 72-hour international Permaculture Design Course syllabus. Subjects covered will include;

Useful resources are highlighted throughout the course and handouts provided with many sessions (included in the course fee). During the course you will be offered the opportunity to order permaculture-related books at a discount, as well as low-cost membership of the Permaculture Association (or an extension to your existing membership, if you're already a member).

Course participants will be awarded the Permaculture Association (Britain)'s internationally recognised Certificate in Permaculture Design.

This has to be gained before you can use the word 'permaculture' in part of your work as a professional or with the public, such as being a gardener, a teacher, a designer, giving talks about permaculture, etc, and will also enable you to go on and complete the Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design.

To be awarded the certificate you must attend a minimum of 70% of the course and complete the design workshop (the final weekend of the course).

Course participants also have the option of accreditation by the Open College Network via the Brighton Permaculture Trust. This is a widely recognised qualification that would be particularly valuable for anyone wishing to add a Permaculture perspective to their Continuing Professional Development or existing skills, including community workers, teachers, architects, planners, landscapers, foresters, agriculturists and conservationists. In addition to the Design Course, those wishing to gain OCN accreditation would be required to submit a portfolio demonstating their application of learning from the course. Read more...

Note that there is an additional charge (approx £55 - exact cost TBC) for those wishing to achieve OCN accreditation for this course in order to cover verifiers fees.

Graham Burnett is the author of Permaculture a Beginners Guide as well as being an experienced permaculture practioner, designer and teacher. He holds the Diploma in Permaculture Design (Dip Perm Des) and is a member of the Permaculture Association’s Designers Register. He has co-run Permaculture Introductory courses, full design courses and specialist courses on vegan-organic gardening, permaculture teacher training, forest gardening and compost toilet building, as well as workshops for, amongst others, Comic Relief, Bioregional, Designed Visions, Organiclea, The Idler, Naturewise, Green Adventure, Birmingham Decoy, Ars Terra (Los Angeles), Ekosense (Croatia), Vegan Organic Network, Plan-It Earth, Permorganics, Thrive (the therapeutic horticulture organisation), Transition Town Brixton,  South East Essex Organic Gardeners and Southend Council’s Agenda 21 forum.

Graham is currently involved with Southend in Transition, an exploration of how the community in which he and his family lives can develop an Energy Descent Action Plan in order to survive and thrive in the low carbon twenty first century.

James Taylor did his Permaculture Design Course in London with Naturewise in 2006 (taught by Graham Burnett & Mark Warner) and recently completed a second in the Dead Sea Valley with the Permaculture Institute of Jordan/Permaculture Institute of Australia (2010, taught by Geoff Lawton). He also holds an MA, an Msc in Human Ecology (Centre for Human Ecology, 2009), a Certificate in Project Management (APM, 2010) and has studied Forest Gardening with Martin Crawford, Green Building with Adrian Leaman of Wholewoods and completed the Permaculture Training of Teachers Course run by Designed Visions.

He regularly volunteers at the Naturewise Forest Garden and at the Meadow Orchard Project. He founded and runs the London Permaculture Flickr site, and is an admin of the London Permaculture Ning site for Permaculture networking.

By day he’s also a curator of archival film and video and the co-editor of the book ‘Shadows of Progress‘ (Palgrave MacMillan, 2010).

Claire White is a Permaculture practitioner and teacher focused on rural and urban Forest Garden projects. She comes from a fine art background and is interested in how mindful human creativity can have a positive impact on our environment, she is also a qualified garden designer and manages her own practice, working with families designing domestic gardens as well as community projects.

She has designed courses to establish forest gardens (at Church Farm in Ardeley and at the Meadow Orchard Project in N19) and has taught on various Permaculture courses. For the last 5 years she has also coordinated the 16 year old Naturewise Forest Garden at Margaret McMillan Nursery School in North London, a useful Permaculture resource.

Claire completed her first PDC in 2005 with Naturewise and a second PDC with Geoff Lawton in Jordan 2010, attended Martin Crawford’s Forest Garden Course (Dartington 2009) and has also completed a Designed Visions Training for Permaculture Teachers course in 2009.

In 2010 Claire developed the programme for the first London Permaculture Festival.

Jan Mulreany is a Trustee of the Permaculture Association (Britain) and a founding Trustee of Brighton Permaculture Trust (2001), Jan is on the BPT Management Group, in the Courses "petal", teaching, managing, and developing the Permaculture Design Course's Open College Network accreditation, and consolidating the use of Action Learning, to develop sustainable learners. A Dip Perm Des since 2004, and an Area Reference Person for the Diploma in the southeast area, Jan supports the local Diploma WorkNet structure with a structured programme of Action Learning Group meetings, various tutorial work, and an embryonic website. Her two 'day jobs', curriculum development and quality assurance for adult learning, and adviser for the use of credit in higher education, draw on long experience in the professional and vocational education fields. As an urban permaculturist she strives to apply the design process to support everyday living patterns and virtual 'landscapes'. She also likes a laugh now and then...

Growing Together

The course venue is Growing Together,  a community garden of approx 1 acre managed by the mental health charity Trust Links, and maintained by volunteers and service users to encourage socialisation, confidence, exercise and education/training. The site comprises of an eco-built classroom, growing areas which supplies vegetables for sale to the general public, wildlife areas, as well as a community area which is open to the general public.  Since 2003 our communal areas have won awards year on year from Southend in bloom and more recently 'Anglia in bloom' for its design and appearance.

Growing Together website

A short film about the work of Growing Together/Trust Links from Channel 4's 'Three Minute Wonder' series

Growing Together is located on the corner of Prittlewell Chase and Fairfax Drive, and is easily accessable by public transport, nearest stations are Westcliff (C2C line from Fenchurch Street) Prittlewell or Southend Victoria (from Liverpool Street)

Address; 47 Fairfax Drive,
Westcliff on Sea

Essex, SS0 9AG


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