Permaculture Courses and Gardening Programs

Home » Permaculture Courses and Gardening Programs

Permaculture is a way that one person or one small group can make a real impact on the fate of the world. Our permaculture courses empower you with tools and skills to work with your environment – wherever that is – to create oases of balance, harmony, beauty, function and sustainability.

Permaculture classes that prepare you to create the future you want to live in.

line drawing of a permaculture homestead

In-person Classes

Black woman using a palm sander to sand the bookshelf she made in a basic carpentry class

Women's Basic Carpentry

This class is intended to get ladies up-to-speed on basic building skills, working with wood, and using hand tools as well as power tools. Focus is placed on ... creating a safe, comfortable, relaxed and fun learning environment in which students with beginning to intermediate skill levels can thrive. Trans welcome.

Choose a 2024 session:

  • Apr 4-7 (filled),
  • Apr 25-28 (filled),
  • May 2-5 (filled),
  • May 8-12 (filled),
  • Jun 6-9 (filled),
  • Jun 27-30 (filled),
  • Jul 4-7 (filled),
  • Jul 24-28 (filled) or
  • Aug 8-11 (filled)
View Course Page
team of people building a tiny house

Tiny House Building Workshop

Gain the skills you need to build your own tiny house from local, natural, or conventional materials. Tour beautifully crafted tiny houses and natural buildings, ... learn about each stage of building from expert lectures, experience hands-on learning as we build a tiny house from scratch, plus get lifetime access to extensive online video library

Choose a 2024 session:

  • May 24 to Jun 1 (filled),
  • Jun 14-22 (filled) or
  • Aug 16-24 (filled)
View Course Page
processing wildcrafted greens for medicine making

Foraging and Medicinal Herbs Course

Identify and wild forage medicinal plants in the Appalachian mountains. Learn to make medicine and cultivate herbs in your garden. Make ... and take home herbal salves, tinctures, flower essences, decoctions, cough syrups, herbal liqueurs, oxymels and vinegars.

  • May 30 to Jun 2 (filled)
View Course Page
rewilding woman making a whisk broom

Women’s Rewilding Retreat

Gather with other women for a long weekend of connection, learning, and rewilding. Basketry, medicine making, cheese and soap ... making, wild foods cookery, friction fire, and more In the mountains near Asheville, NC.

  • Jun 6-9 (filled)
View Course Page
Permaculture Design Certificate Course

Permaculture Design Certificate Course

This permaculture class empowers students to become effective ecological designers and planners. You will ... come out of this class with deep knowledge about creating forest gardens, ecology, permaculture principles, plant species and variety choices, holistic forestry, and more.

  • Jun 16-29
  • Monthly or one time payment options available
  • Secure checkout
  • Flexible refund policy
  • Sliding scale pricing based on income
View Course Page
A male student practicing making cuts in boards on a mitre saw at an all genders basic carpentry class at Wild Abundance

All Genders Basic Carpentry

Get deep satisfaction from learning carpentry In a culture that’s zooming toward virtual reality and digitizing the day-to-day, not everyone grows up learning ... how to use tools and work with their hands. Our woodworking class for beginners and folks who have used tools, but don’t feel totally comfortable with them is here to change that. No matter your lifestyle, you surely interact with physical objects like shelves, chairs, tables. Learning carpentry can be rewarding and satisfying whether you want to build for yourself, feel confident fixing things around the house, or interacting with folks you hire in a confident way

  • Sep 26-29, 2024
  • Monthly or one time payment options available
  • Secure checkout
  • Flexible refund policy
  • Sliding scale pricing based on income
View Course Page
4-Month Carpentry Program

4-Month Carpentry Program

Get confident building for yourself and others. Our hands-on carpentry program is non-residential and takes place at Wild Abundance, located near Asheville, NC. It’s ... appropriate for beginning to intermediate level builders; no experience is necessary, just enthusiasm and a willingness to learn by doing. If you do have experience, there will be plenty of depth and advanced skills to dive into.

Choose a 2024 session:

  • Mar 19 to Jul 10 (filled) or
  • Jul 30 to Nov 20 (filled)
View Course Page
gardening and permaculture apprentices in the garden

Gardening and Permaculture Apprenticeship

Learn to grow vegetables and tend food forests in this one-day-per-week program that spans an entire growing ... season. Non-residential permaculture apprenticeship.

*What is Standby?
  • Mar 19 to Nov 19 (standby only*)
  • Monthly or one time payment options available
  • Secure checkout
  • Flexible refund policy
  • Sliding scale pricing based on income
View Course Page
closeup of building instructor using chisel

Timber Framing Class

Learn how to lay out, measure, cut, fit, assemble, and raise a 16' by 20' timber-framed building through demos and hands-on practice. This class is appropriate ... whether you are an experienced carpenter, backyard deck builder, or excited beginner who just has a knack for craft.

  • Sep 1-7
View Course Page

Online Classes

closeup of shovel digging into garden

Online Gardening School

Are you ready to grow some serious food? This online video course will give you the skills and tools you need to be able to grow a garden for yourself,... from the ground up. Lifetime access, live mentorship.

*What is Standby?
  • Monthly or one time payment options available
  • Full refund up to two weeks after purchasing course
  • Secure checkout
View Course Page
10 Spring Wild Foods That You Can Find Almost Anywhere

10 Spring Wild Foods That You Can Find Almost Anywhere

Do you want to be able to feed yourself from the wild? Discover delicacies growing right outside your door. Your guide through this course is seasoned ... Wild Abundance instructor Luke Cannon. He’s been foraging wild foods for over two decades! More than a botanist, Luke is a long-time pursuer and teacher of the magic and medicine of plants.


Changing the world through a class might sound pretty idealistic, but our permaculture courses are anything but. That’s because we’ve created curricula that don’t just cover big ideas and theoretical scenarios. Permaculture training with Wild Abundance is practical and realistic. All of our instructors bring life experience to the table. Many of them have been practicing and living permaculture for decades!

Permaculture design courses that are rooted in real-world experience and practical know-how.

permaculture workshopsPermaculture education is for everyone. We’ve had students from all kinds of backgrounds and lifestyles. With this in mind, we offer several different ways to earn your Permaculture Design Certificate.

The traditional, intensive Permaculture Design Course is a 10-day workshop where you live and breathe permaculture. It’s full-on, fun and free of distractions. In fact, we even offer a meal plan option. It provides you with amazing food and the time to focus more completely on your studies and design project.

If taking 10 days off in a row isn’t possible for you, or if you want to give yourself more time to let the knowledge percolate, don’t worry. Our Immersive Permaculture Design Certificate Course offers just that, and more. It’s a series of long weekend workshops over the course of a whole growing season (April – November). In addition to the 72 hours of content that is required for all Permaculture Design Courses, we include more than 100 additional hours in the immersion. Relevant, complementary content broadens and deepens what this class provides.

 

permaculture training

Permaculture is lifelong learning, we teach much more than just PDC courses

For those of you who want to learn permaculture by living it, we welcome a few folks to our homestead each year as apprentices. Becoming a permaculture apprentice includes participation in both of the options above. Plus, you get a place to live in the most beautiful spot on the planet (okay, maybe we’re a little biased). We give apprentices one-on-one guidance, so each person gets a learning experience that’s tailored to his or her unique style. Plus (yes, there’s more), apprentices get to participate in all of our other classes and programs. There are three different apprenticeship options, so if this is for you, check them out at our Permaculture Apprenticeship page.

 

The people and planet need your unique contribution. Join us for a Permaculture Design Course.

permaculture ashevilleNow is the time to take action. Ecological and social degradation are not waiting on us; they’re barreling ahead at full speed. With this in mind, solution-oriented change makers (like ourselves) need to dive in and move at the same speed. But you don’t need to know all the answers or fix the world’s problems alone.

Taking a permaculture design course is a first step. It will get you ready to make positive changes right now, where you’re at. We believe that a healthy, sustainable future needs lots of empowered individuals. With permaculture, working at the community level who understand systems-thinking. We are looking forward to meeting you and sharing our knowledge as we weave this web of change!