In Person Permaculture Design Certification - Brooklyn, NYC
Courses & Workshops - Spring 2025
164 Meserole Street. Brooklyn
10am to 4pm EST
April 5 & 6, 12 & 13, 19 & 20,
Field Trip Days – April 26 & 27, May 3 & 4
May 10 Graduation
11 SESSIONS -- WEEKENDS ONLY
$900
Bring a friend and get $100 off!
ALL LIVE SESSIONS!
Our Permaculture design certification course imparts a positive and empowering vision for social and ecological transformation. We will train you to be a permaculture consultant who can apply the permaculture principles to a diversity of landscapes, scales and issues from rural to urban, and temperate to tropical environments. Come be inspired by the possibilities of today and not by the fear of tomorrow!
Permaculture Design is :
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A design science that provides a new model for economic development.
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Addressing the major social justice and environmental issues of our times from a whole systems perspective.
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A worldwide movement that is helping to regenerate local ecologies and economies.
The certification connects you to an international world of designer’s, architects, organic farmers, and communities who all recognize it as a legitimate passport to another level of knowledge. Permaculture is a widely adaptable design tool that enables you to design for an entire system such as a business model, property, region, community, greenway, apartment complex and more. Permaculture is only limited by your experience and your imagination. We are here to help you grow both!
Many of our graduates begin businesses based on what they learn with us from natural beauty product lines, herbal remedies and teas to ecological film projects, animation company’s, recording studio’s, organic farms, and holistic retreat centers.
Topics Covered:
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History & Origins of Permaculture
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Sustainable Cities
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Regenerative Organic and Biodynamic Farming
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Temperate and Tropical Agroforestry Systems
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Natural Building
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Finding Land & Starting Communities and Homesteads
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Climate Resilience
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Off Grid Energy
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Ecological Water Solutions
This course is the foundational 72 hour Permaculture Design Certification program, endorsed by PINA the Permaculture Institute of North America. Our course offers systemic solutions to the contemporary social justice and ecological issues of our times. Our certification connects you to an international world of designers, architects, organic farmers, and communities who all recognize a permaculture design certificate as a legitimate passport to another level of knowledge.
WHAT IS PERMACULTURE?
Permaculture is a design process and a worldwide movement that is helping to regenerate local ecologies and economies by addressing our social justice and environmental issues.
Hands-on Permaculture Classes
Ellenville, New York
May 31st through June 29th - Weekends only - 10am - 4pm
Join us in Ellenville on our educational campus, 18 years in the making!
These are the workshops that many of you have been clamoring for.
They will be relaxed, very informative, fun and a great way to have an immersion educational experience on our permaculture campus.
Andrew Faust and Adriana Magaña at our Center for Bioregional Living are proud to present a series of advanced permaculture and ecological design courses this season.
We have thoughtfully crafted each of these offerings to extend your fundamental Permaculture design skills and advance them strongly, with these hands on trainings taking you forward on the wings of true experience!
Our themes this season are:
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Working with Rain water
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Biodynamic Gardening
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Whole site Design
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Natural Building
All the courses in this series function as stand alone teachings and they build off of each other when taken together. You will be helping to create a legacy that will be enjoyed by future visitors and students for years to come.
Camping is encouraged in designated areas on our land and taking in the sights, during off time, at one of the many nearby gorgeous hiking areas (Lake Minnewaska, Sam's Point, Peter's Kill to name a few)
Rain Water Abundance
Installing Rain Tanks & Rain Gardens
Hands-on Workshop - May 31st - 10am - 4pm - $100
Come and Learn how to capture, hold and store pure high quality rain water. A free gift in a place that gets 49 inches of rainfall a year! You can catch .6 gallons per inch of rainfall, for each square foot of roof area you connect to a tank.
Topics:
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Calculate your water harvest
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Install a rain tank system
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Use Gravity for water pressure
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Off grid sinks and showers
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Connect your overflow or downspouts
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Design a series of dynamic diverse, flowering rain gardens
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Create havens of biodiversity and beauty fed by rain tanks!
Celebrate the abundant gift of rain water and solve water problems on your land with one action. Learn to create gravity fed rainwater supplied irrigation systems for gardens and livestock. You will learn how to connect a big rain tank to your house and how to properly plumb it to use for watering needs on your land and for fun!
Introduction to Permaculture & Biodynamic Gardening
Saturday, June 7 - 10am - 4pm - $100
In this workshop we will have hands-on activities taking you from seed starting to bed prepping and planting an organic market scale garden.
Come and join us at our one of a kind of Permaculture farm in Ellenville. The Center for Bioregional Living is a demonstration farm designed specifically, as our example to the regional food movement Offering opportunities and approaches for addressing our food needs with more of an integrated, ecological, permaculture approach.
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Discuss preferred seed sources
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Explain the Biodynamic Calendar & how we use it
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Prep and plant beds in our garden
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Explain our rain water catching system
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Discuss permaculture in the fruit & vegetable garden layout
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Explain when we use the tractor and when we use hand tools
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Show you amendments that we use in our garden and why
You will get a chance to plant seed and prep beds and learn experientially about some key biodynamic and permaculture gardening insights and approaches to take home to your family and farm.
Permaculture Whole Site Design
June 21st & 22nd - 10am - 4pm - $400 -- Meals and Camping included!
Learn to lay the groundwork for an entire land development project; establishing ecological businesses, community farms, eco-villages, co-housing and homesteads. Siting buildings and integrating the entire project through a solid phase plan. Hands-on activities: siting buildings and infrastructure, laying out and establishing earthworks and infrastructure.
Topics:
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Identifying Trees
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Understanding Water
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Creating Habitats
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What Pollinators Need
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Reading the landscape
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Making use of topography and hydrology Identifying biological indicators
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Whole site analysis, mapping techniques
Come participate in the Center for Bioregional Living’s Permaculture Design Educational center where we will help to teach people the essentials of high quality ways of living abundantly now and into the future.
Naturally Built Tiny House
Saturday June 28 and 29 - 10am - 4pm - $400
Meals and Camping included
Healthy Buildings = Healthy People
Applying the permaculture principles throughout the building process. This hands-on workshop series will teach you about creating buildings with trees cut from the land, maximizing on-site and local raw materials and framing with rough cut local lumber. Natural, local and bioregional buildings contribute to ecologically sound local economies and create beautiful, healthy homes and villages to live our lives in.
Topics:
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Passive solar design
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Phased and integrated site development and building techniques.
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Building structures and sacred sites with good feng shui and natural energy.
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Insulating naturally, using rainwater for domestic needs and greywater for gardens.
How to use Straw bales:
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Earthen Plasters, Light Clay straw
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Passive solar hot water systems for domestic heating
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Off grid Energy systems
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Minimizing household sources of Electro-Magnetic Fields
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Using gravity and low energy pumps and systems for indoor/outdoor plumbing systems
When you complete this entire series you will know how to create a beautiful natural building from the ground up and set it up to be fully off the grid! Come and learn how to create healthy, natural reasonably sized homes, outbuildings and communities . We will teach you how to analyze building locations and materials to determine how ecologically safe and sound they are. Most of our time will be spent outdoors and there will be plenty of hands-on work. Home cooked and locally sourced meals included! Lodging options include limited indoor common area as well as tent space on our beautiful 14 acres. Bring tents, sleeping pads, sleeping bags.
FREE ONLINE PERMACULTURE COURSES
INTRODUCTION TO PERMACULTURE
MARCH 25, 2025 -- 7pm
Permaculture addresses the major issues of our day with a whole systems approach. It is a worldwide movement that is helping to regenerate local ecologies and economies.
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History of Permaculture
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Designing Your Home, Farm & Business
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Regenerative Farming, Biodynamics and Climate Resiliency
JOIN OUR ON LINE MONTHLY PERMACULTURE MEETUP
APRIL 4th -- 7PM
"Buying and building your place in the country"
Andrew Faust - Founder | Director
One of the premier Permaculture teachers and designers in North America with over two decades of experience in the field. His passionate and mind expanding talks and curriculum have motivated teachers, students since his decade long career as a H.S. teacher at Upattina's, a open community free school in Glenmoore, PA.
Faust received a dual diploma in Design and Education from Permaculture Institute of North America in 2016. Andrew and Adriana Magaña with their daughter Juniper run the Center for Bioregional Living in Ellenville, NY., a hands-on educational campus for students and clients. Andrew is a certified Alternative School Teacher, focusing on Bioregional Education; he instructed at Upattina's Open Community High School from 1992-2001. Faust holds a B.A. in comparative religions from Guilford College.
Permaculture Student & Entrepreneurs
Testimonials and Reviews
"The online course is 100% worth it! I just completed the online 2020 permaculture certification course and was blown away by the amount of information I gained. The information itself is a healthy mix of bass-tacks-know-how (geared towards the Northeast), theoretical, analytical, biological, philosophical, cosmic, and spiritual. Because of this, the class is suited for anyone who is interested in learning or DOING permaculture. Andrew's knowledge is vast, informative, and sobering. You can't fake that. It becomes very clear within the first few minutes." - Ben Feistmann
https://www.rainyseasonsnursery.com/about
https://www.instagram.com/rainyseasonsnursery/
OUR WORLD CLASS PERMACULTURE TEACHING TEAM
Adriana Magaña
Co Founder | Instructor
Adriana Magaña is an interdisciplinary artist and designer living with her family in Ellenville, NY. Adriana is inspired by her commitment to co-create a sustainable world with integrity and ethical values; a world based in nature and justice.
David Harper
Co Director of Permaculture Living Lands Trust has more than 30 years of work with conservation land trusts, community land trusts and local food and farming organizations, resulting in permanently preserving 8,000+ acres of farmland, natural areas, and cultural and historic sites in Pennsylvania.
Rhamis Kent
Rhamis Kent is a consultant with permaculture-based regenerative whole systems design serving as a registered certified Permaculture Design instructor with PRI Australia. He is a former co-director of the Permaculture Research Institute (PRI)
Larry Santoyo
Founder of the Permaculture Academy and lead instructor. He has been a teacher and practitioner of Permaculture Design for the 28+ years and spent over a decade studying and teaching with Bill Mollison.
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Clea Chandmal
India on Tropical systems, Clea, from a ‘Genetics’, 'Ecology and Evolution', ‘Plant Breeding’ and a ‘Plant Molecular Physiology’ background (University of Cambridge, UK) and a Permaculture background (PDC : Bill Mollison; Geoff Lawton; Greg Knibbs; and Andrew Millison), is a recognised expert in Regenerative Systems. Her approach and methods are novel and rigorously developed over 30 years at her 'food forest' farm at the foothills of the Western Ghats in India.
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Andrew Faust is the founder and director of Center for BioRegional Living and a permaculture designer, teacher, and activist. Andrew is known for his dynamic teaching style and his ability to inspire people to take action and make positive changes in their communities. He’s also an advocate for social and environmental justice. He believes that permaculture can play a crucial role in addressing issues such as climate change, food insecurity, and social inequality by promoting sustainable and regenerative practices. It all might sound very serious but believe me, it’s very ticklish stuff as you’ll hear.
Permaculture Center for BioRegional Living - Farm Tour
Available by appointment only - $100.00
Please call - 917.584.4588
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See a working Permaculture Educational Farm
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Learn how to grow more of your own food
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Learn how to set up big rain tanks for water security
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See our straw bale cabin, outhouses and natural classroom
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See how create ponds and to find and develop springs
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Visit our Dwarf Nigerian Goats, heritage chickens, nut trees natural buildings Biodigestor and more.
Andrew Faust Permaculture Consultation Services
Property Analysis
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Real Estate Appraisals
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Energy Consulting
"If it was not for Andrew I would have completely bought the wrong piece of Land and wasted tens of thousands of dollars. After sharing my goals, Andrew patiently took months of narrowing down properties I sent him from online listings. Then he went to visit the best and final online selections in person, selecting the best of the best within my budget. Hiring his services was well worth every dollar. I would highly recommend leveraging his experience to anyone serious about buying land. " - Property Analysis Client
Permaculture Gardens and Landscapes
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Gardens
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Agroforestry
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Native Pollinator
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Orchards
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Biodynamic
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Meadows and Landscape
- Design, build and maintain diversified, beautiful, edible and native landscapes for our clients using permaculture design principles. We fully utilize southern exposure for rare and delicate fruits and cooler areas for rare woodland medicinals and other appropriate plantings. We will disperse detrimental energies like wind and sun and increase privacy and the diversity of use by the strategic placement of the plantings we create on-site.
Natural Building Services
We combine our experience in natural building and landscape construction to create healthy homes for healthy people. We will site buildings to be well located in regards to water drainage around them and maximize the natural benefits of being oriented to the sun for winter homes and towards the north for passive cooling and root cellars.
Humanity is more than ever threatened by its own actions; we hear a lot about the need to minimize footprints and to reduce our impact. But what if our footprints were beneficial? What if we could meet human needs while increasing the health and well-being of our planet?
"INHABIT - IS QUITE SIMPLY THE BEST FILM EVER MADE ABOUT PERMACULTURE" - Permaculture Magazine
WHAT WE DO:
Educational Initiatives
Permaculture Design Consultation
Water Quality & Regional Planning
Herbalism, Food & Healing
CLASSES & WORKSHOPS: