At The Resiliency Institute we use permaculture education, growing food security projects, and community engagement to build resilient communities.
We offer courses in permaculture, herbalism, edible wild plants, homesteading, and more. Some courses are taught over the course of a year, others are evening courses or weekend hikes. Throughout the year we host Permablitz events at our Growing Food Security edible forest gardens and potlucks on the farm to view films, swap seeds, or celebrate community. We sponsor and exhibit at local events and often give talks at libraries, garden clubs, or other venues.
Why We Do
The suburbs were originally designed to be car centric, resource intensive places for people to live and commute to work. This design has caused a dependence on oil and the automobile, transformed nature into pavement and buildings, and created a culture of stress and competition. The time has come for a
suburban permaculture redesign!
Our vision is of suburbs where people are connected through strong social networks, foraging in edible forest gardens and food forests is a daily community activity, cooperatives of all types exist, social equity & justice are integrated, renewable energy is available to everyone, and so much more. Permaculture provides the ethics, principles, and design strategies to achieve these transformations, creating economically, environmentally, and socially resilient communities.
The word “permaculture” was coined and popularized in the mid 70′s by David Holmgren, a young Australian ecologist, and his associate / professor, Bill Mollison. It is a contraction of “permanent agriculture” or “permanent culture.”
Permaculture is a design system for developing ecological landscapes, lifestyles and communities. "Permaculture is not a discipline in itself but rather a design approach based on connecting different disciplines, strategies, and techniques." (Hemenway, Gaia's Garden)
