Everybody spent a little time introducing themselves and talking about what brought them to this thing called permaculture.

Even I had to introduce myself and spend a little time talking about what lead me to permaculture.

Lessons plan loaded onto my Sony e-reader for quick and easy reference

We put all our goals on Post-it Notes and stuck them on the whiteboard for everyone to see.

Erin does a great job organizing the goals and we begin to see how our ideas converge.

Erin begins to add graphics to the emerging image. The tinder of knowledge is fueling the flames of passion!

Akira and John look on in interest as a picture begins to emerge from the clusters of post-its.

The groups intention has emerged into this amazing graphical representation of what we all hope to achieve from the course.

Chow gives a great explanation of how the instructors goals are fitting into this co-creation.

Bunny and Wes describe using dead wood to build soils in Hugelkultur mounds

Describing the use of a hugelkultur system for the dry climates.

Creation Flame uses wicking beds to conserve water in a dry climate.

Inspecting the overflow for Creation Flame’s reed bed grey water system.

Observing the grey water filtration system that treats the Creation Flame’s waste water.

The Open Source Ecology’s Compressed Earth Brick machine that was fabricated by Creation Flame.

Goji watches over the goats

Touring the green house, complete with a home scale aquaponics system made from recycled coolers.

The modular Power Cube for all the Open Source Ecology machines.

The foundation of permaculture is in the ethics: Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share.

Chow and I discuss ethical design challenges during the group exercise.

Testing decisions through an ethical framework is challenging and takes a lot of deep thought, careful consideration and thorough discussion.

How well do carbon credits stand up to the Permaculture Ethic of Earth Care?

What questions would you ask when testing the work of tree planting against the Permaculture Ethic of Fair Share?

Can Carbon Credits stand up to a deep consideration of our Fair Share Ethics?

Chow discussing the principle of Patterns to Details and how it applies to permaculture design.

Using David Holmgren’s Permaculture Design Principles with only a slight modification.

Listing the inputs and outputs of various elements within a design.

All things in nature are connected to one another. Finding ways to tie the inputs of one systems to the outputs of another is good design.

Connecting the inputs and outputs for a better understanding of how things can be arranged in design.

Permaculture Principles being portrayed through dynamic story telling.

The Permaculture Principles being relayed through fun interpretive dance.

A visual representation of the permaculture principles

Sectors are all about understanding the energy flows through a property or system.

Using modeling clay to represent the placement of various elements based on a Zones and Sectors analysis.

We also used the concepts from our input/output exercise to help determine Relative Location.

Designing a zone one garden based on patterns found in nature.

Using the Branching Pattern of to design a raised wicking bed water delivery system.

The worlds largest herb spiral! A new ‘twist’ on the herb spiral design, this group decided we should be able to walk through our herb spiral.

This team combined ripples in a pond with the iron cross to form a functional water efficient garden.

A rotational garden design system that builds fertility over time.

Clusters of guilds scattered throughout the landscape. Order within chaos.

Discussing the dynamics of trees and the effects they have on the forest community.

The three main biomass zones of the tree go far beyond the what we would normal call a tree.

The first steps of succession are the introduction of plants to hold the soils together and mine minerals deep underground.

As diversity increases what used to be a gravel driveway starts to look more like a forest ecosystem.

As the Hardwoods begin to populate an ecosystem it can be said that the ecosystem has reached what is considered a climax.

Each group was given a design scenario and asked to create a design that best fit the goals.

Designers brainstorm the best design given the skills they’ve learned, the goals and their limiting factors.

Each group was given similar design scenarios with different budgets as design limitations.

Thoughts began hitting the paper in the second part of this design session.

Putting designs to paper takes a lot of consideration, discussion and effective planning.

Permaculture design is a mix of art and science. It’s very important that we exercise both of those skills in the design course.

This group chose a creative strategy of making scale models of the elements they wanted then moving them around until they found the right placement.

The designs beginning to take shape in a very real way.

Part of the challenge is learning to think, work and design in a group setting.

Groups present their design work based on the scenario they were given.

Part of the design challenge was to imagine you were presenting this work to a potential client.

The scenarios were made to be as realistic as possible with meeting the clients goals being the highest priority.

Our first stop on the tour was the very exciting home of the Food is Free Project.

Food is Free Project is best known for their easy to install wicking beds made from recycled materials.

There is a lot more to the Food is Free Project than just wicking beds… The vortex is home to chickens, aquaponics, composts and community gardens!

The folks at the Food is Free Project were kind enough to loan us Bessie, the Food is Free Bus, for a fun day of site tours!

Boarding Bessie we head out to our next destination… the Tillery Street Project.

Tucked away on Austin’s east side is a quite little business park and permaculture garden space.

Beth observes the landscape of her group’s sandbox before the design work begins

The group analyze the contours within their sandbox to determine how to layout earthworks

The dams and swales begin to take shape as students recognize the opportunities in the keylines

The group discusses the various possibilities for maximum water storage capacity in the landscape

The concepts, which can often be hard to grasp on flat topographical maps, become more clear in three dimensions

Using a transit level to map out contour lines within a landscape in preparation for earthworks design

Caroline looks through the scope of the transit level to find the level in the landscape

Learning to find contour with a transit level helps to remind us how easily the human eye can be tricked

Everyone takes a turn looking through the scope and holding and moving the post

Projects were designed to be as realistic as possible.

A layered design strategy helps to organize the information in to manageable pieces.

To make the designs realistic and manageable I asked people to design phases of implementation.

Some design elements are too lofty to include in the final design. Layers of design.

Many design groups incorporated multiple media formats to display their work.

Creating realistic scopes for the design of large properties can be very challenging.

Designing from patterns to details helps when taking on such large properties.

John zooms in on the details of one of the main production areas of the design.

This groups didn’t stop at property boundaries. They worked from a broad acre design out into the broader community.

Jonathan serenades us with the ukulele to add a little flavor to this beautiful design project.

This design team looked at the broader historical context for the design and then zoomed into a regenerative design strategy for 130 acres.

How well did we hit the mark? This bullseye represents peoples opinion about the course. Most of the feedback was clustered in the first two rings!