Permaculture and Forest garden design practical
New to forest gardening or permaculture, or perhaps you have completed a Permaculture Design Course (PDC) and are looking for the next step to improve your design and implementation skills?
Want to help make a real design at an amazingly beautiful community farm and help create a bountiful permaculture forest garden for them.
Then please join this deeply engaging 4 day design session.
Designing forest gardens: 9th and 10th March 2024 9am to 5pm
Permaculture Design: 16th and 17th March 2024 9am to 5pm
Rakesh Rootsman Rak is an experienced permaculture and forest gardening designer and teacher. He will coordinate all participants to help make a real design for the venue. So you will learn many of his design tools while being full engaged in adding your creativity, passion and knowledge to the design.
This is an opportunity to see how Rakesh works while also sharing what you know or learning the many tools Rakesh has in his permaculture and forest gardening toolbox
The course is spread over two weekends which can be attended as distinct weekends or as a whole.
We are all too well aware of the challenges the world faces, especially in our food growing systems.
This course shows us how to address many of these issues by making low maintenance, nutrient dense, biodiverse rich food growing systems know as food forests or forest gardening. We will also add many additional features to the design using Permaculture design.
So if you are interested in ecology; helping to increase biodiversity; sequester carbon; manage greenhouse gases; cool your surroundings while growing nutrient dense foods, soaps, medicines, crafting materials, etc but with minimum effort i.e. where nature does the work, and enriches itself, then consider this course.
====== FIRST WEEKEND ======
9th and 10th March 2024
9am to 5pm
Designing forest gardens
Imagine your garden or community space looking as lovely as a woodland edge. Imagine that on top of looking wonderfully wild, it produces an abundance of nutrient dense food and will ultimately need very little digging, weeding, manual watering or pest control - all in harmony with animals and other beings (eco friendly and vegan). This is 'an edible forest garden'.
Forest gardening is a way of growing food where nature does most of the work for you. Modelled on natural woodland, crops are grown in different layers from high and medium sized canopy to roots, ground cover and climbers. And its not just food and medicine you will get from the forest garden, there are many more yields.
Through careful planning plants are chosen which have beneficial effects on each other, attract beneficial insects and create a healthy biodiverse rich system that maintains its own fertility. Once established, your main task will be harvesting!
======= WHAT TO EXPECT ======
The course is designed so you will learn how to make a forest garden anywhere, including your own home, while also making a real design for the venue.
Over the 2 days you will learn about the basics of designing a forest garden. You will get to understand
- How to select the right plants for your environment
- Where to place them to ensure they thrive
- How to ensure you have the right nutrients cycling to ensure good crops
- History of forest gardening
- Why make a food forest
- Layout of a forest garden
- Multifunctional pathways
- Creating abundance and resilience
- Low maintenance food growing
- Patterns in nature for forest gardens
- Understanding and maximising edge
You will put all of this into action by helping to design a real forest garden for the venue.
====== SECOND WEEKEND ======
16th and 17th March 2024
9am to 5pm
Permaculture Design
This is a stand alone course, but is also a continuation from the first weekend. We will look at what is permaculture design, and use what we learn to continue to make a design of the venue.
======= WHAT TO EXPECT ======
Over the 2 days you will learn about the basics of permaculture design. You will get to understand
- Permaculture ethics and how to use them to make ethical choices
- Permaculture principles and how to use them to strengthen designs
- A design methodology to simplify and make designs easier and more robust
- Water management strategies
- Soil improvement strategies
- Land management strategies
- Low maintenance food growing systems
You will put all of this into action by helping to design a real forest garden for the venue.
====== LEAD FACILITATOR ======
The course will be led by Rakesh Rootsman Rak - experienced Permaculture designer, teacher and Forest Garden specialist, yoga teacher and homeopath. He has been growing food since he was a child, and has been designing and teaching edible landscaping, permaculture, forest gardening, etc since 2009. Rakesh has designed and implemented forest gardens from small-scale private gardens and schools, to farms, community gardens, communal nature gardens, as well as helping design and implement forest gardens for various eco villages.
======= THE VENUE =======
Berkeley Farm
Manor Rd, Lambourne End,
Romford, RM4 1NH,
United Kingdom
====== COURSE COSTS ======
We want this course to be accessible to all and are therefore working in a conscious contribution system, inviting you to pay what you can afford towards meeting the needs of the facilitator(s). We therefore invite those who can pay more to help those who cannot afford as much.
Please contact us if you have any questions about this.
Weekend 1 Forest gardening
Suggested contributions of between £50 and £200 for the 2 days (ideal contribution £120)
Weekend 2 Permaculture design
Suggested contributions of between £50 and £200 for the 2 days (ideal contribution £120)
Weekend 1 & 2
Suggested contributions of between £90 and £400 for the 4 days (ideal contribution £220)
If you cannot afford this then PLEASE get in touch and we will work something out that is mutually beneficial.
======= REGISTRATION =======
To register for this course, please click on the ticket section below and fill in the form (make sure you hit the submit button, after which you will get an email confirmation). If you do not get an email confirmation, have any difficulty filling it in or have any questions please feel free to contact Rakesh
https://tinyurl.com/BerkleyFGPC2024
======= CONTACT DETAILS =======
Course and Content, please contact Rakesh:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rootsmanrak
Email: rakeshaji@gmail.com
