Who is this course for and why should you take part ?
Who is this course for ?
This course is for anyone that has a desire to create for themselves or for others, regenerative landscapes that produce food and other resources for humans while enhancing biodiversity. This includes edible gardens, wildlife gardens, forest gardens, market gardens, permaculture farms, polyculture orchards, parks and small holdings.
Whether you are a landscape designer, a homesteader, a farmer, forester, land manager, land owner, member of a community garden, have a small garden/balcony in the city/suburbs, looking for your place, or are planning on a career in regenerative design, you will find a rich, authentic and valuable experience on this course.
Who is this course not for?
If you are looking for information to work in tropical climates this course is not for you. We're sure you will find our framework, processes, design tools, presentation methods and design strategies useful and applicable but the majority of the plants we showcase and discuss and the ecological patterns we are building our work around will not be relevant to tropical climates. May we suggest you find a course specifically dedicated to growing in tropical climates.
Why take this course with us ?
We will guide you from start to finish in what you need to know to design, build and manage regenerative landscapes.
Whether you are; looking to start a career in design, already have a design career, seeking information to guide the design of a property, currently working on your land or seeking to buy property in the future, our course will provide you with detailed insight. We will build your confidence and help you make the right decisions on your path to growing food and other resources while providing for wildlife.
If you already have a site, you will have the opportunity to bring your site into the course to discuss and plan with each other and Paul.
The course builds towards a final design project of your choice. You will complete the course with your design in hand and be ready to implement. Potentially this will save you expensive consultancy and design fees for your project.
As far as we know there is nothing currently available that is comparable to what we are offering in terms of the depth and breadth of what we will share and our unique approach to regenerative landscape design built from our experience on the ground. The course has been designed to be of interest to an expert and presented simply enough for a novice to clearly understand.
You will be provided with a wide range of unique material including design spreadsheets, planting schemes, extensive plant lists, videos from our gardens and weekly sessions with over 40 hrs of live questions and discussion time with Paul.
Your tutor Paul Alfrey founder of Balkan Ecology Project and The Polyculture Project has over two decades of experience working with plants and experience designing and consulting in multiple climate zones and countries of the world with 15 years of experience working on the ground at the demonstration gardens at the Project . You can find a small sample of Paul's work here. Paul is in a unique position to provide you with the highest quality information in the field of regenerative landscape design.
It's our primary goal to provide you with the confidence and inspiration to design and build regenerative landscapes, gardens, and farms that produce food and other resources for humans while enhancing biodiversity. A secondary goal of ours is to build a network of people proficient in polyculture design to serve an ever-increasing demand that we are seeing for design and consultancy work. The course is designed so that after completion you will not only be equipped to design and implement your own projects but that, if you really enjoy the work, we will be happy to work with you under our supervision to assist with our professional design and consultancy work.
On top of all of this, just so you know, your payment will be going to good use and we will be using every penny we earn from this program to invest directly into developing our demonstration and research gardens, specifically paying for boundary fencing (the wild boars and goats have a habit of eating some of our research). Your funds will contribute to us building a world class example of regenerative polyculture landscapes at our site and extending our ability to share this work with others. Our site is open to visitors and you are welcome to email us to arrange a visit to see what we are working on. We also have annual open days that you can find more about here.