Humanity now stands on a precarious peak of high energy use, resource use, and population. Storms approach from many directions. The key issue of our age concerns how to gracefully and ethically descend from this peak, while rebuilding healthy ecosystems and thriving human communities.

Permaculture’s fundamental strategy involves designing complete cultural systems that consciously mimic ecosystem structure and function. Landscape design represents a critical slice of this broad strategy, for landscapes teach us how to apply ecological design principles to the tougher challenge of designing ecological societies. This talk explores core tenets of permaculture with practical examples for town- and country-dwellers alike, offering occasional nods to the larger cultural systems that we must also consciously design.

Design is the key verb of permaculture. Given that the medium is the message, if we want an ecological design result, we must use an ecological design process to get there. What does an ecological design process look like and how does it work? This half-day workshop provides opportunities to experience ecological design as an interconnected ecosystem, and as an inherent part of ourselves as human beings. We are all designers!

Enter the GreenMan's Lair! Join Bruce on a tour of a working 20-year old permaculture homestead on his lot in Traverse City. See how Bruce integrates flower and vegetable gardens with fruit and nut plantings and other interesting landscape plants. Bruce will talk about building a lot from recycled and salvaged parts - both plants and materials. Most importantly, you'll see a snapshot of a dynamic system evolving over time, and learn firsthand how to use that foreknowledge (Bruce's hindsight) to avoid making costly mistakes! This is a bonus workshop not featuring Dave Jacke.

Guest teacher and more information coming soon! This is a bonus workshop and is not led by Dave Jacke.

Polyculture design offers the most interest and challenge in ecological garden design. We seek to create effective perennial polycultures: combinations of perennial plants growing in one patch that minimize competition, create additive yields, and minimize the gardener’s work and outside inputs. This workshop explores the specific ecological theories behind polyculture design and lays out practical polyculture design techniques such as Niche Analysis, Guild Build, Ecological Analogs, and Patch Design.

Water flows over, within, and throughout all living things, connecting us to whole systems much larger than our limited concept of ourselves. As our paradigms shift from separation to joyful interdependence, how can we embody this knowing in our homes, landscapes, and communities? Let’s explore a myriad of principles and approaches to the ecological design of water within human habitats. Where do we fit into the water cycle? How can falling and flowing water benefit humanatural ecosystems while improving aquatic ecosystem health? Participants will undertake brief design problems for water system challenges at the EcoLearning Center site. When we design to accommodate natural water cycling, we begin to heal the landscape and gain other useful benefits.

Ecosystem agriculture attempts to mimic the structure and function of natural ecosystems in food-producing ecologies. This workshop explores the vision, theory and design of ecosystem agriculture using the temperate deciduous forest ecosystem as the model. The forest gardening vision helps us grasp the value of ecosystem architecture and social structure as concrete design elements. We will develop patterns and principles for garden design and management based on these basic facets of forest ecosystems.

Permaculture cofounder Bill Mollison once said, "Everything gardens". Every organism in your garden or on your homestead or farm interacts with and changes its environment in multiple ways. Animals, in particular—from large livestock to small, poultry to insect pests—have multiple functions and interactions we mostly ignore. We thereby lose opportunities for beneficial interconnections that can reduce work, waste, and pollution and increase yields. Whether we know it or not, we create food webs and ecosystems all the time. When we do it unconsciously, we don’t do it very well, so we may as well get good at it. General principles, practical examples, and tantalizing tidbits of research provide lots of room to play, so let’s get to it!

Forest ecosystems have evolved to gather, store, cycle, and conserve nutrients, building “natural capital” over time. In a world of increasingly expensive energy and fertilizer, we must learn to mimic and improve upon this anatomy of self-renewing fertility to maximize our own garden’s nutrient-conserving behavior. One hint: perennial plants do it deeper all the time! Along the way, we will discover that the most fertility-building ecosystems tend to be those in mid-succession: fields half way to becoming forest through natural ecosystem changes over time. What other secrets do forest succession processes hold for ecosystem designers? There are a few good ones, but the key is this: succession helps us understand ecosystem dynamics better than almost any other aspect of ecology can. Come get your mental models revised and see the world anew! You’ll never design the same again.