Permaculture Design Certificate (Twelve Day Course)

Over six immersive weekends, you’ll explore powerful, practical tools for transforming your home, your community, and the wider world.

This course goes far beyond gardening. You’ll learn the core principles of ecological design and how to apply them in diverse contexts – from home gardens and community spaces to sustainable building, ethical enterprises, and even broadscale landscapes.

Alongside hands-on design skills, you’ll develop your communication and collaboration abilities, preparing you to become a confident practitioner of one of the world’s most vital regenerative disciplines.

Permaculture is a holistic, long-term approach to the challenges of our time. The PDC is an investment in your future – one that will continue to grow and give back for years to come.

This course offers a comprehensive, hands-on introduction to permaculture principles, empowering participants to create resilient, productive systems in harmony with nature.

Whether you're new to permaculture or looking to deepen your knowledge, our practical approach and deep ecological insight will guide you through the fundamentals of land, water, food, and community design — helping you apply these tools to your own life, projects, and landscapes.

This course is being delivered through a partnership with Helygen Permaculture CIC, a new community‑focused training organisation founded by Paul Jennings and Luke Peake. Helygen was created to support practical, accessible ecological education in Camarthenshire, Swansea and across Cymru, helping people build the skills and confidence needed to design for a regenerative future.

Paul and Luke bring complementary experience to this work. Paul is a long‑standing Permaculture designer, teacher and practitioner with more than thirty years’ experience across community projects, ecological design and food growing. Luke is a PDC graduate, an innovative designer, organic grower and community activist whose work is rooted in creativity, collaboration and hands-on learning. Together, they’re developing a thoughtful, community‑centred approach to Permaculture training that blends solid design skills with the relational ethos at the heart of the movement.

We start by looking at the origins of and the need for Permaculture, outlining definitions and finding out what the participants want from the course. We’ll look at the ethics behind Permaculture Design and the important design principles that together make a powerful and accessible toolkit for all kinds of projects, but especially food growing ones.

We’ll be looking at and discussing numerous real-life examples of Permaculture in practice and delving in detail into water in the landscape, trees in the landscape, soil and soil life, gardening with a Permaculture twist, urban Permaculture, and community organising and groups working together.

Over the course of the 6 weekends participants will complete two design practices and come away from the course feeling confident that they can take their new training away and carry on the good work.

This course is certified by the Permaculture Association. Those completing a minimum of 75% the course will receive a Permaculture Design Certificate.

We use a progressive, inclusive pricing structure to keep these courses accessible. Those choosing the Pay‑it‑Forward rate help fund supported places for people who would otherwise be unable to attend. Fully supported places may be available, and priority is given to residents of the Tywi Valley and county of Carmarthenshire

Dates: The course will be taught over 6 weekends

• 26th & 27th June
• 25th & 26th July
• 22nd & 23rd August
• 12th & 13th September
• 24th & 25th October
• 28th & 29th November

Times: 9.30 - 4.30 each day, with around 6 hours of teaching and breaks for lunch, tea and coffee

Location: Gwynfe Growers, Gwynfe, Llangadog, SA199RL

Pricing: A £10 deposit is payable via EventBrite, we will contact you to pay the remaining balance, for a total cost for the course of

• Solidarity: £250
• Standard: £400
• Pay‑it‑Forward: £550

Bursary Availability: If cost is a barrier, please contact Luke @ Helygen.cymru, as we have a limited number of bursary places available.

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Host or Publisher Permaculture Tywi