Permaculture Roots – Hillsborough, NC
April 11 @ 9:30 am – 5:30 pm
Learn how to grow food and tend land in a Permaculture way!
Learn a Permaculture approach to gardening, building soil, and resilient, climate-adapted food.
This 1-day Saturday workshop will leave you with a practical understanding of how to integrate Permaculture practices into your land and life.
We’ll learn simple approaches to working with nature that set Permaculture apart from most conventional gardening and farming.
Whether you’re entirely new to Permaculture or have explored it for yourself, these workshops will be sure to teach you something helpful to deepen your relationship with land and give you confidence to grow wild and nutritious food in the Piedmont while leaving the land more diverse and alive.
Topics:
- Intro to Permaculture Design
- Working With the Soils and Climate of the NC Piedmont
- Where to Put a Garden
- Building Good Soil Without Buying Stuff
- Growing Low-Input, Low-Maintenance Food
- Food From Trees
- Cover Crops, Sheet Mulching, and Other No-Till Techniques
- Simple Explanation of Permaculture Guilds and Polycultures
- Locally Adapted Perennial Vegetables
- Growing with (Some) Shade and Why Full Sun Isn’t Always the Best
- Gardening With Climate Change in the Hot Humid Piedmont
- 20+ Plants for Your Permaculture Garden
- Hands-On Permaculture Practice
- …Plus answering your Permaculture questions
Each workshop in this series will include opportunities to connect with nature and our senses, learn Permaculture design, answer your questions, and meet other amazing humans interested in Permaculture.
Venue and Workshop Details:
Our workshop is held at Jubilee Healing Farm – a beautifully tended small farm located on 10 acres in Hillsborough, NC that supports volunteer and community-building activities and workshops for people seeking healing.
We’ll have the workshop part inside and part outside unless the weather disagrees! Please wear comfortable clothing for the day. If it’s going to rain a little, bring rain gear. A little rain is very helpful for Permaculture design!
We’ll likely do a little forest walking. Good to wear compatible footwear. If you’re concerned about ticks or other itchy expressions of the local ecology, please bring non-toxic insect deterrent.
What to Bring:
- Notebook and pen
- Your own lunch and any snacks you need (kitchen available to heat up food)
- Water bottle
- Seeds or plants to swap if you have any you want to share.
Also:
- Openness to different ways of seeing and living
- Kindness towards the plants, animals, soil, water, and other people here
- Inclusivity and welcoming spirit towards the people in the workshop
- Willingness to put your phones away and tune into your senses
- Curiosity about life and what each other and the land has to say
Sign-Up
We offer our tickets at a reduced rate for people experiencing significant financial need. Thank you for supporting this work.
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 70 clients on their land, lived off-grid for 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.
Matt is also an herbalist (…in training, like all herbalists..!) and has been putting strong-tasting plants in bottles to make helpful things happen since 2007. He prepares dozens of local herbal medicines for his community every year.
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 the 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.
