Fear Free Future with Toby Hemenway Nov 1

“Redesigning Civilization: Where Our Culture Went Wrong and How Permaculture Can Help”

It’s no secret that our society has become unsustainable. Modern agriculture, industry and finance all extract more than they give back, and the Earth is starting to show the strain. How did we get in this mess? And, more importantly,what can we do to help our culture get back on track? The ecological design approach known as permaculture offers powerful tools for the design of regenerative, fair ways to provide food, energy, livelihood, and other needs while letting humans share the planet with the rest of nature. This presentation will give you insight into why our culture has become fundamentally unsustainable, and offers ecologically-based solutions that can help create a just and sustainable society.

Toby Hemenway is the author of Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, which for the last seven years has been the best-selling permaculture book in the world. He has been an adjunct professor at Portland State University, Scholar-in-Residence at Pacific University, and is currently a field director at the Permaculture Institute (USA). Toby has presented lectures and workshops at major sustainability conferences such as Bioneers,  SolFest, and EcoFarm, and at Duke University, Tufts University, University of Minnesota, University of Delaware and many other educational venues. Toby and his wife, Kiel, spent ten years creating a rural permaculture site in southern Oregon. He was the editor of Permaculture Activist, a journal of ecological design and sustainable culture, from 1999 to 2004. He moved to Portland, Oregon in 2004, and after six years of developing urban sustainability resources there, Toby and his wife now divide their time between Sebastopol, California and western Montana.

Special Evening with Toby, Roosevelt 2.0 Thurs Evening begins Thursday 1 November 2012 at 7pm. 1812 15th North Tampa, Florida $10 in advance, $15 at the door, pay here: or call Bob Lawrason 727-831-5832

Toby Hemenway Urban Permaculture Design Workshop Nov 3-4

Urban Permaculture Design for a Fear-Free Future – Designing Resilient Gardens and Communities in Cities and Suburbs

Toby Hemenway, internationally renowned author of Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture – the best-selling permaculture book in the world for the last seven years – is coming to Tampa Bay to present an exciting workshop.

Toby will teach you how to find, harvest, and integrate the many resources in our cities in sustainable ways, including getting access to land for organic gardening, creating business guilds and networks, using the pattern language of the city to create more abundance, creating public space in neighborhoods, building urban ecovillages, and more.

Don’t miss this unique opportunity to learn urban permaculture design
from an international expert

Call Bob Lawrason at 727-831-5832 to sign up or find out more information.

$190 for the entire weekend! Special rates for students ($150)  and couples ($340).  Register via PayPal or call Bob.

November 3 & 4, 2012. 9 AM – 5 PM

Mocassin Lake Nature Park, Clearwater, Florida

Urban Farming, Forest Gardens, and More

How can we create resilient, regenerative cities and suburbs? Permaculture, an ecological approach to design, shows us the way. Though land may be limited, cities are rich in other resources, especially human resourcefulness. This workshop will offer specific techniques and strategies for food production, energy security, and community resilience in metropolitan areas.

Toby will share the passion, focus, wisdom and wealth garnered from his decades of experience with resilient living via urban permaculture design.

You will hear examples, see pictures, learn about the specifics and participate in class exercises that will engage you and leave you with tons of practical and hands-on ideas for your own yard, neighborhood and city.

Learn about:

• Forest garden design and use – get your questions answered.
• Social, economic and energy aspects of city and town life – practical solutions that work.
• Urban food, water and land issues and how to solve them.
• Visible and invisible structure design for the specific challenges in cities and towns.

Toby Hemenway is one of the most popular designers and teachers in the world.

This workshop is filling up fast! Call today to reserve your spot.

Bob Lawrason 727-831-5832

Learn about Urban Permaculture Design from the Best

Toby has over 20 years of experience as a permaculture designer and teacher and has visited and designed hundreds of sites. You will tap into this wealth of experience and learn from his successes and failures, giving yourself the confidence to move forward quickly with your own projects.

Whether you are an architect or landscape designer, urban planner, green business owner, gardener, farmer, or interested in local food or energy security, sustainable living, the Transition movement, ecology, or community, you will learn many tools to improve your abilities.

Learn to leverage the special opportunities that cities and suburbs provide.

About Toby Hemenway

Toby has been an adjunct professor at Portland State University, Scholar-in-Residence at Pacific University, and is currently a field director at the Permaculture Institute (USA). Toby has presented lectures and workshops at major sustainability conferences such as Bioneers, SolFest, and EcoFarm, and at Duke University, Tufts University, University of Minnesota, University of Delaware and many other educational venues. His writing has appeared in magazines such as Whole Earth Review, Natural Home, and Kitchen Gardener. He has contributed book chapters for WorldWatch Institute and to several publications on ecological design.

Check out Toby’s website, www.patternliteracy, for the great info in his latest articles.

“I will never look at the world in the same way. This course has changed everything.”

B.W., Santa Fe

“This was a transformative educational experience for me. Thank you!”
A.B., Bremerton, WA

“Toby’s teaching is well-organized, effective, and clear. I love the examples of permaculture principles in action, especially in an urban setting.” M.J., Hillsboro, OR

Register via PayPal on this site to reserve your spot, or

Call Bob Lawrason today

727-831-5832

to sign up or find out more information,

Fall 2012 Urban Permaculture Design Course, Tampa Bay

Permaculture design works with nature to create abundance for all living things. Permaculture principles and techniques cover a wide variety of topics, all of which are covered in this course. You will learn:

• Natural building techniques for Florida – cob, straw bale, yurt, earthship, do it youself, and others
• Alternative energy choices – geothermal, solar, wind, hydrogen, which is best and why
• Successful organic gardening in Florida soils
• Urban homesteading and survival skills
• Creating a backyard forest garden
• All about edible weeds, using worms for fertility, medicinal herbs, healthy food, compost, mulch, getting high production fruit trees, perennial vegetables, and aquaculture
• How to design naturally while strategically managing resources- all in an organic way, so it becomes a part of your thinking
• Sustainable economics – how to create resiliency, fairness, and abundance through working with nature – cutting edge business models for stable, long term economic health
• How to work with nature to create abundance for all living things
• Regenerative permaculture communities – creating abundance through cooperation

This course offers a Provisional Permaculture Design Certificate. Whether you want to change your personal environment or embark on an exciting career, this course will give you a chance to see permaculture design in action, get hands on experience, and get feedback from experienced designers
on tough design problems.

Seven Weekends – 15 September through 18 November

Moccasin Lake Nature Park, Clearwater, Florida

All Weekends: $1050. Or purchase each separately for $190.

Weekends four and seven are $125 and $100 respectively.

Register today. Call Bob Lawrason at 727-831-5832

Seating is limited and we expect to fill to capacity, so register early.

For more info, call Bob Lawrason or email him at bob@growpermaculture.com

To pay online, use PayPal button in the right column.

Your registration form will be sent to you.

Permaculture Design Course Curriculum

Weekend One

Permaculture principles and design

September 15 & 16, 2012. 9AM to 5 PM

• Learn to work with nature, instead of against her.
• Learn to apply natural permaculture design in any setting or circumstance.
• Recognize and use the patterns of nature to increase abundance.
• You will be able to immediately apply these permaculture principles to your life to increase abundance and quality of life.
• Learn what permaculture is and what it can do for your life and your community.

The first morning of this course is FREE!

To register for this or all weekends, call Bob Lawrason at 727-831-5832

Weekend Two

Secrets of the natural world – energy patterns of trees, water, land

September 22 & 23, 2012. 9 AM – 5 PM

• How to bring the magic of nature into every aspect of an urban environment through conscious design.
• Think like an ecosystem
• Capturing water and sustainable water use
• The transactions of trees – mimic the powerful energy transactions of trees in your design
• The secrets of soils – how to grow lush, healthy plants anywhere

To register for this or all weekends, call Bob Lawrason at 727-831-5832

Weekend Three

Growing food sustainably and abundantly.

Work with nature instead of against her to create abundant organic gardens and “food forests” that need little work to maintain.

October 6 & 7, 2012. 9 AM – 5 PM

• How to grow food in Florida, the easy way, from seed to harvest
• Jumpstarting a food supply – feed yourself within one season
• Integrated pest management (organic)
• How to build a Florida friendly forest garden – plant lists, guilds, step by step, free resources, propagation and more
• Container gardening, aquaculture, community gardening, sustainable urban farming, sustainable agriculture, making a living by growing food.

To register for this or all weekends, call Bob Lawrason at 727-831-5832

Weekend Four

Optional – Field Trips and Hands-On Activities

See what is going on locally that will impact our future

and define careers and purpose.

October 13 & 14 2012. 9 AM – 5 PM

• Get into the garden and plant stuff!
• See examples of permaculture in action.
• See “green” buildings, organic farms, etc, and get feedback from experts on how to improve on it. Permaculture will take you beyond the ordinary!

To register for this or all weekends, call Bob Lawrason at 727-831-5832

Weekend Five

The built environment and appropriate technology, financial permaculture

October 27 & 28, 2012. 9 AM – 5 PM

• Learn to retrofit your built environment to reduce costs
• and help the environment
• Learn about cutting edge “green building” and how to solve problems of the built environment yourself with creative, low cost or no cost solutions.
• Natural building techniques
• Alternative energy and technology
• Basic cob building – hands on workshop
• Creating a regenerative local economy
• Alternative approaches to creating abundance – how and why do time banks, local currencies, etc, work?

To register for this or all weekends, call Bob Lawrason at 727-831-5832

Weekend Six

Urban Permaculture

Special guest speaker, Toby Hemenway, Author of Gaia’s Garden.

November 3 & 4, 2012. 9 AM – 5 PM

• Forest garden design and use – get your questions answered.
• Social, economic and energy aspects of city and town life – practical solutions that work.
• Urban food, water and land issues and how to solve them.
• Visible and invisible structure design for the specific challenges in cities and towns.

Toby Hemenway is one of the most experienced urban permaculturists around. We are excited to be able to offer this opportunity to our students. See Toby’s bio at: http://www.patternliteracy.com/biography-for-toby-hemenway

To register for this or all weekends, call Bob Lawrason at 727-831-5832

Weekend Seven

Saturday: The power of community!

November 17 & 18, 2012. 9 AM – 5 PM

Creating community is rewarding and efficient. Learn simple techniques to create or participate in intentional community, co-housing, community gardening, and positive activism and, for artists, Artivism!

Sunday:  Students will present their final designs.

To register for this or all weekends, call Bob Lawrason at 727-831-5832

Permaculture Design Course Instructors

• Lead instructor: Koreen Brennan (see bio at: http://www.permacultureguild.us/links/)
• Special Guest: Toby Hemenway, Nov 3-4. http://www.patternliteracy.com/biography-for-toby-hemenway
• Other Special Guest Speakers:
  Robert Kluson, Soil Scientist
  Marie Nelson, PhD, Financial Permaculture
• Bill Bilodeau, The St. Petersburg Permaculture Guild
  “Jungle Jay”, Appropriate Technology
• and many more illuminaries!

Special Deals!

Refer a friend, and get 10% share once they complete payment.

Student and senior rates, sliding scale and work study rates available.

Payment plans also available. Includes materials, field trip fees, etc.

To register, call Bob Lawrason at 727-831-5832

Why Take Our Fall Permaculture Design Course?

Permaculture is short for permanent agriculture or permanent culture. By cooperating with nature and her energies, we are able to design human systems to be more abundant, more long lasting, more ethical, healthier for all life in the system, and more enjoyable. It is a cutting edge approach to living that helps both people and the environment.

This is the comprehensive internationally recognized 72 hour Permaculture Design Certification course, based on Bill Mollison’s work. Permaculture design offers regenerative techniques, tools and design principles to enable you to live abundantly while caring for the environment and the people around you. Working with nature allows you to grow food with less work and expense, create stronger economic networks, and increase your overall quality of life, while using less, and creating less pollution.

This fall’s course is the most comprehensive and intensive line up we’ve ever offered. Our choice of expert speakers, field trips, focused hands on activities (that give you step by step real skill sets), well-organized written materials, and design tools are the result of feedback from dozens of students from previous courses. We welcome feedback, and we respond to it. We apply Permaculture Principles #4 – Accept feedback and apply self-regulation.

Systems (whether homes, work places, gardens, farms, communities, local economies, or cities) that are designed with permaculture principles and techniques use resources in a regenerative way, ensuring that we, our children and our grandchildren will have access to all the resources they need.

Here’s what our graduates say:

“This course changed my life forever. It changed the way I look at everything, and gave me tools to address problems I thought had no solutions. It reinvigorated my connection to, respect for and love of the natural world and increased my understanding of it tremendously. It made me feel powerful and able to change things rather than helpless or apathetic. It gave me hope again, a renewed purpose for life and so many tools that I never dreamed existed! It brought back magic to my life, lightness, and fun!”

“Realization: Permaculture is a thought process that can be applied to all systems.”

“This course is the most exciting one I’ve ever attended because it’s all about finding solutions and connecting people together.”

“Hold on to your shorts! The wave of the future is upon us! Everyone should be exposed to permaculture. It’s the only way to live!”

“I’ve had my permaculture friends tell me this course changed their life. I never understood why, or what the fuss was about, until I did the course myself. It is a paradigm shift to a much nicer and better paradigm. Don’t hesitate to do this course!”

“This course rebooted my life. I am no longer bluescreening, but ready to connect further.”

Who Takes This Permaculture Design Course?

• Artists
• Do it yourselfers
• Educators – homeschool, teachers, professors
• Gardeners
• Green architects/builders
• Green consultants
• Homesteaders
• Landscapers
• Natural health practitioners
• Non-profit/community organizers
• People who care about the earth and each other
• People who love healthy food
• Permaculturists
• Policy makers
• Professionals (of many types)
• Recent college graduates
• Students
• Urban and rural farmers
• Vegan, raw food, slow food, and/or local food
• Yoga practitioners

Permaculture Design Course

Moccasin Lake Nature Park
2750 Park Trail Lane
Clearwater, FL 33759
727-793-2976

Saturdays and Sundays

Seven Weekends

Beginning on September 15, ending November 18, 2012

9 AM to 5 PM

To register for entire course or individual weekends

Call Bob Lawrason, 727-831-5832

Design services

We consult, design and install sustainable systems in your home, business, or farm, that can help you save money and live healthier, all in environmentally friendly ways.  We address the four necessities – food, water, shelter and energy.  We can consult in just one of these areas, or all of them – we offer a full range of services, from advice, to design, to installation.

Click here to introduce yourself and let us know how we can help.

FOOD

Edible landscape design and installation

We design landscapes to be both beautiful and functional.  An edible landscape is:

• Organic
• Natural – we design gardens to work with natural systems, rather than fighting them
• Easy to care for –  less work than conventional gardens
• Aesthetic, beautiful and interesting
• Healthy, providing nutritious food year around
• Economical – skip the fertilizer, and reduce your grocery bill with fresh, healthy food you grew yourself

We offer an unusual selection of attractive plants, both native and non-native, that grow well in Florida conditions and will provide abundant food in small spaces.  We can also give you great advice on what to plant, when, and how, if you want to do it yourself but need some help getting started.  We can usually save you at least the amount of our consulting fee and can provide you with a lot of quality information in a short period of time. Interested in selling your food? We can help with that too.

Aquaponics

Do you live in a small space, but you would like to produce your own healthy, organic food?  Try aquaponics.   Aquaponics is water efficient, energy efficient closed loop system for providing a large amount of food in a small space, even an apartment!

WATER

Rain catchment, irrigation and water filtration systems

We can provide your irrigation needs via rainwater catchment, so that your plants are getting the purest water available to them.  We also provide whole house filters and items that make your water come to life and bring you new levels of health and vitality.  Want to use pure, filtered rainwater for all of your needs?  We install rainwater catchment and filtration, or help you to do it yourself.

Ponds

Enjoy the aesthetics of a backyard pond that is a naturally balanced system. When you have all the elements of nature present, there is very little care needed.

Natural pools

Tired of putting chlorine in your pool? Would you like to use that resource to produce abundant food, and have a beautiful natural pond in your backyard?  We can convert your pool to a pond, using wetlands techniques. These are very aesthetic additions to your yard, and can also be stocked with fish and edible plants. The pond can be linked to an aquaponics system that can boost your vegetable production tremendously, as well.

SHELTER and ENERGY

Solutions for more sustainable living in your home – we offer energy reduction analysis, consultations on planned renovations, and partnerships with green architects and builders to maximum energy savings, aesthetics and integration of the built environment with the natural world.

Click here to introduce yourself and let us know how we can help.

Apprenticeships at Pine Ridge

Apprenticeship, volunteer and internship programs on Pine Ridge. Read more