From PDC to Practice: Learning Permaculture by Doing It!

In episode 131 of The Permaculture Vine Podcast, host Cormac Harkin was joined by Lindsay Brandon of Permaculture Canada and Armagarden, and Harry Sealy, who is making the transition from environmental consultancy into permaculture.

The conversation covered what a Permaculture Design Course (PDC) involves, Lindsay’s approach to delivering her own PDC, choosing between different courses, using a property as the basis for a PDC design, and what happens when a design begins to be implemented on the ground. The discussion also moved into ongoing education, current projects and the role of Indigenous and local knowledge.

Who’s at the Table

Lindsay Brandon joined from her school bus in an off-grid community in Golden, British Columbia, Canada. She is with Permaculture Canada and Armagarden and is currently developing a Permaculture Design Certification course, while living seasonally on the property and planning further work in Canada and Central America.

Harry Sealy is based on the southwest coast of Ireland, around 400–500 metres from the Atlantic. His career has largely been in environmental consultancy and environmental impact assessment, including work in Ireland, the UK and the Middle East. After completing an online PDC with Geoff Lawton, he is now working on four acres near the coast that he hopes to develop as a permaculture demonstration site.

What a Permaculture Design Course Covers

The conversation began with what a PDC actually is and how Lindsay and Harry experienced their own courses.

Lindsay described her PDC as a change in how she looked at land. The course brought together weather, geography, history, water movement, species, compaction and other observations of a site. She had already been involved in gardening, but found that the PDC extended beyond gardening into the relationships between different elements of a system.

That included looking at how the people using a property interact with the land, what they need from it and how the different elements can be connected.

Harry came to his PDC from a different background. He had already spent around 25 years working in environmental consultancy and initially expected much of the course material to be familiar. He said the patterning section in particular changed how he looked at the subject.

He also discussed the accessibility of PDCs. In his experience, the course did not require a particular educational or professional background and introduced concepts from the beginning before building on them.

The discussion also covered the range of subjects within permaculture. Lindsay noted that people can develop particular interests in areas such as soil, climate or topography rather than expecting to specialise in everything.

Lindsay’s PDC

Lindsay has been developing her own courses over several years. Her current plan begins with a basic Permaculture Design Certification, followed by an advanced designers course for people who want to take the work further and learn how to design and present projects digitally.

The first PDC is planned as an online course running once a week on Wednesday evenings from mid-November to mid-February. Lindsay described this first version as a pilot programme that will help develop later in-person courses in Golden, British Columbia, and Mexico.

One aim is to have participants from different climates involved rather than focusing entirely on a single climatic region. The course will therefore include discussion of different implementation practices in cold and tropical climates.

Students will develop a design throughout the course. Each week’s topic feeds into homework and the final project rather than leaving the complete design until the end.

After the main course, Lindsay plans to include additional question-and-answer and design mentoring sessions. Students will then have time to finalise their designs before presenting their projects at the end of March.

The planned in-person versions will contain the same underlying material but allow more practical work. Lindsay discussed possibilities including earthworks, earthen building, ponds, food forests and working with the animals and existing infrastructure available at the locations.

Choosing a PDC

With many different PDCs now available, Harry asked how somebody new to permaculture could decide which course to take.

Lindsay suggested researching both the organisation and the people delivering the course. She discussed looking at their existing work, videos and other material, as well as contacting them directly where possible.

Communication was part of that consideration. She suggested seeing whether prospective students can speak with the people involved through email, a phone conversation, Zoom or another form of direct contact.

Cormac compared this with his own experience completing Geoff Lawton’s online PDC as part of a much larger group. He liked having the course information released progressively, giving time to work through the volume of material, but said that if he were doing another PDC he would like to take one in person in Ireland and in his own climate.

The conversation also compared large online cohorts with smaller groups and the amount of interaction different students may want.

Harry highlighted the value of live questions and answers. Lindsay described her own experience of mentoring students and answering questions, including occasions when she did not know an answer and said so. The discussion acknowledged that the range of climates, plants and subjects involved means that nobody is going to know everything.

Designing Your Own Property During a PDC

The conversation then moved to whether a student should use their own property for their PDC design.

Cormac had not designed his own property during his PDC because he considered it too small at the time and instead worked on a seven-acre site.

Lindsay said that having regular access to the land provides opportunities to observe things that cannot necessarily be seen through aerial imagery or online tools. A student can return to an area, observe compaction, add material and see how it changes through the seasons.

She also made clear that owning land is not a requirement. A student could work with somebody else’s property or another place they can regularly visit. People without land can still take the course, and not everyone completing a PDC needs to become a designer.

Harry also chose not to use his own property for his PDC project. He worked on a property in the Balearic Islands, giving him experience with a semi-arid Mediterranean environment and a different planting palette.

For his own property in Ireland, he later had the mainframe design completed by another permaculture designer. He wanted the initial structure of the site to be right before implementation began.

Moving from Design to Implementation

Harry’s four-acre property provided the main example of moving from a completed design into implementation.

He described the process as learning by doing and has deliberately been putting elements in gradually. Current work includes a polytunnel, the planned location of a mandala garden, composting, a Three Sisters demonstration area and perennial vegetable beds.

Around 900 mixed deciduous trees have been planted as a shelterbelt. Swales, fruit and berry hedges have also been established, with Harry estimating roughly one-and-a-half to two kilometres of planted hedgerow.

The shelterbelt planted from saplings around two years ago is now reaching approximately three to four metres in places, with the canopy beginning to close.

Larger projects remain further into the future. Harry discussed plans to explore pond-based or holistic aquaponics alongside conventional tank-based aquaponics, potentially involving a geodesic dome, a large pond and research with a local university.

The cost of constructing the pond and the regulatory requirements around fisheries and possible escape into waterways mean that this part of the site remains a longer-term project.

Designing a Temporary Off-Grid Setup

Lindsay’s current situation in British Columbia provides a different design context.

Her school bus sits on the future location of a community space, so much of what she is doing needs to remain temporary and movable. She did not choose the original position of the bus, but she can decide how other elements relate to it.

That has included the position of an RV, water storage, an outdoor shower, the kitchen and a humanure system. Greywater from the shower currently runs towards an existing channel, with plans to eventually route kitchen greywater towards the same area and use available woody material to create mulch beds.

She also discussed the neighbouring piece of land she is considering for a longer-term site. Features she identified included a south-facing slope, water access, the view and protection from northerly and westerly winds.

Power in the bus currently comes through a portable solar setup with battery storage and flexible solar panels. Lindsay also uses Starlink because internet access is required for her work.

Her current setup reflects the fact that she is only living there seasonally. She arrived in August, plans to leave in November and expects to return in April before developing more of the systems.

Learning Through Implementation

The conversation returned to the difference between having a design and actually working with it.

Harry described several things he had learned from his polytunnel. Planting flowers with basil and tomatoes brought pollinators into the space, while blackbirds discovered his grapes and managed to get around the netting he had installed.

One possible change for next year came from his father: using a bead curtain at the polytunnel entrance, with enough space for pollinators while making access more difficult for birds. Lindsay suggested incorporating reflective or metallic material as an additional deterrent.

Harry also completed a pond construction course through Kinsale College as he prepares for the larger pond projects he would eventually like to build.

The discussion around this returned to the fact that completing a PDC did not mark the end of learning. Further courses, practical work and experience on the property continue alongside implementation.

Indigenous Knowledge, Local Knowledge and Language

Later in the conversation, Harry discussed his interest in learning from Indigenous communities and incorporating Indigenous knowledge alongside the approaches he had encountered through environmental consultancy.

He spoke about previous work in which he wanted project teams to include people with First Nations backgrounds and knowledge of the land being studied.

Lindsay discussed her own experience working with an Indigenous community in Canada and observing knowledge connected with plants, food systems and the landscape. She also spoke about an upcoming tribal gathering involving people from different parts of the world and her longer-term interest in sharing a plant-based water remediation technique.

The conversation then moved to Ireland and the information contained in original Irish place names. Harry described looking beyond anglicised place names to their original Irish meanings as another way of reading the landscape.

Cormac also discussed his growing interest in Irish language and older Irish terminology relating to rain, fields, grasses and other aspects of the landscape.

From the Course to the Land

Episode 131 followed the path from taking a PDC through to working with an actual property.

The conversation covered Lindsay and Harry’s experiences of their own courses, Lindsay’s developing PDC, how students might choose between courses, whether to use their own land for a design, and the move from a completed design into practical implementation.

Harry’s developing four-acre site in Ireland and Lindsay’s temporary off-grid setup in British Columbia provided two different examples of that process, alongside discussion of further training, practical experimentation, Indigenous knowledge and local language.

Get full access to Cormac Harkin at cormacharkin.substack.com/subscribe