Saturday Permaculture Workshop Series in Hillsborough, NC
Beginner-friendly Permaculture classes with a lot of depth!
Join us for the whole series or drop in for any workshop.
Next Workshop – Nov 8
Learn Permaculture Locally
We're partnering with Living Arts Collective to bring this 5-part series of one-day Permaculture workshops. They're designed for both beginners and people who have practiced some Permaculture on their own.
The workshops will take place, indoors and outdoors, at Jubilee Healing Farm in Hillsborough, NC (details below).
What You'll Learn:
Every workshop will include opportunities to connect with nature and our senses, learn Permaculture design, answer your questions, and meet other amazing humans interested in Permaculture.
Workshop Topics
May 17 - Roots 1 - Soil, Gardens, Trees, Food!
- Quick Intro to Permaculture
- Reading the Landscape
- Building Good Soil Without Buying Stuff
- Growing Low-Input, Low-Maintenance Food
- Getting Food From the Trees
- Locally Adapted Perennial Vegetables
- Gardening With Climate Change
- May Plant Walk + Foraging Talk
- 20+ plants for the Permaculture Garden
- ... Plus Answering Your Permaculture Questions
Sign up for May 17 Workshop (or whole series) here
June 21 - Roots 2 - Creating a Food Forest (Part 1)
In May we'll practice applying Permaculture design to a new food forest at Jubilee Healing farm. In October, we'll start installing it!
- All About Food Forests / Forest Gardens
- Applying Permaculture Design Techniques
- Weaving Beauty and Places for Life
- Laying Out a Food Forest Design From Pattern to Detail
- Selecting the Right Plants
- Some Favorite Edible Trees and Shrubs!
- Food Forest / Forest Garden Questions
Sign Up for June 21 Workshop (or whole series) here
September 13 - Roots 3 - Living Closer to Earth
- Main Things to Know When You Move to Live On Land
- The Pleasures and Perils of Tiny Living and Going Off-Grid
- Affordable, Ecological Shelter Options in 2025
- Fun Off-Grid Things - Outdoor Kitchens, Rocket Stoves, and So On!
- Living Well on Small-Scale Solar
- Permitting, Loans, and Other Uncomfortable Stuff
- Catching Water and Living in the "Rain Budget"
- Designing for Wildfire and Heavy Rain
- Answering Your Land Buying / Home / Off-Grid Questions
Sign Up for September 13 Workshop (or whole series) here
November 8 - Roots 4 - Planting the Food Forest!
Continuation of the June 21 Food Forest workshop - now we start to install the design! This class will be a mix of hands-on installation and other learning about food forests.
- Food Forest Review / Questions
- Hands-On Food Forest Learning!
- Installing the Food Forest From Pattern to Detail
- Using Fun Hand Tools
- Planting Trees (...the Easy Way)
- Installing Tree "Guilds"
- More Plants for the Food Forest
- Answering Any Other Permaculture Questions
Sign Up for November 8 Workshop
Come To Our Workshops If You Want To:
- Learn and applying Permaculture skills and perspectives in your own life.
- Gain a deeper knowledge and belonging in the changing ecosystems we live within.
- Learn a Permaculture approach to growing plants and working with land that aligns with nature to create life.
- Open your own dormant capacity to perceive the wholeness in ecosystems and to become more receptive to what they are saying.
- Know 25+ plants specifically helpful to grow in the Southeast and how to grow them
- Have a deeper understanding of how water, sun, wind, fire, soil, animals, plants, and people affect a landscape and can be worked with.
- Be equipped to participate in restoring the ecosystems around you.
- Be more prepared to work with the intense change happening around us and tune into a resiliency and trust in the earth, your community, and yourself.
- Learn how to spend less money and buy less crap by understanding some of how people met their needs for millions of years without money, factories, or online shopping.
- See your environment with new eyes and learn to see many problems as holding the seeds of their solutions.
- Become as obsessed with trees as Matt is! (... well, maybe)
- Laugh, have fun, and be challenged and supported in learning a beautiful art of reunion with earth.
- Meet other brave people finding their way home to nature, one step at a time and hopefully make friends!
About the Facilitator
Matthew “Watersong” Tracy started practicing Permaculture in 2011 and received his design certificate from Wild Abundance in 2015. He has been consulting and teaching as a Permaculture Designer since 2018.
Along the way, he learned from numerous Permaculture teachers, tended land with minimal inputs, worked with around 50 clients on their land, lived off-grid for nearly a decade, and made (... and still makes!) a whole lot of humbling and valuable mistakes on his way back to life in harmony with the earth.
With all that experience, Matt is ever a beginner and student of the land. Nature is infinite. What can we do but listen and try?
Matt is honored to be a Permaculture guide to anyone interested in coming a little closer to earth. Becoming a father in 2023 has made passing down these teachings that always consider future generations more important than ever.
Read the rest of Matt's bio here.
About Permaculture
Far more than a system of gardening, Permaculture teaches a way to harmoniously integrate people and ecosystems in a way that regenerates both.
Deeply indebted to the ancestral ways of old growth cultures across earth, Permaculture was created as a response to living in uncertain times.
Permaculture helps us move from consumers to producers and from the cause of ecological destruction to a vital part of the land's health.
With Permaculture, we meet our needs through partnership with the land. We learn that the earth is already in each moment creating everything we need to thrive. If we re-learn how to tend those gifts, there can be enough for everyone to live well.
By choosing to work with nature's intelligence, we create low-input gardens, homes, and ways of life that benefit from the support of natural forces instead of being stuck in a fruitless struggle against them.
Every step we take in Permaculture considers the effect on the greater family of the wild and the generations that come after us. As a result, we leave the land and our communities healthier than when we began.