Things have been buzzing with the University of Victoria permaculture course!

After an incredible three month journey creating designs for community groups in the city, I joined instructors Hannah Roessler and Mike Simpson along with 21 students for a weeklong field course at the magical Linnaea Farm on Cortes Island. We designed the UVic program in this 2-course series to meet the 72-hour requirement for the permaculture design certificate (PDC).

Permaculture design approaches have been used for over 30 years at Linnaea Farm, where the first PDC in Canada was held. We toured mature food forests, old growth, natural buildings, market gardens, and hung around with free range cattle. A truly transformative nature-based learning experience!

We’ve created a course blog where students wrote about their experiences. You can read their stories here. This blog is also a space for students’ research on useful plants and permaculture topics – now and for future courses too! Here are some of my photos from the trip.