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  • From: Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Suggestions for an open permaculture curriculum list to use for guided self education
  • Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2025 21:10:36 -0400

Suggestions for an open permaculture curriculum list to use for guided self education
https://www.reddit.com/r/Permaculture/comments/29y5k4/suggestions_for_an_open_permaculture_curriculum
Question: "I'm not interested in risking the price of tuition on a university education, and I doubt that I'm alone in that. So I'd like to gather a list of books, videos, 
and audio recordings that'll constitute a fundamental education in permaculture, including areas of mechanical and structural engineering that should be applicable 
to permaculture design. Any suggestions? So far I've begun with Tree Crops by Russell Smith and Barefoot Architect by Johan van Lengen."
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There's a great Bill Mollison lecture series here from the early 90's.

I would also recommend going back to the primary systems theory texts that inspired mollison and holmgren.Howard Odum's 'Environment, Power and Society', Limits to Growth, Donella Meadows Thinking in Systems.

There's a short talk here by Odum's brother Eugene which explains many of these concepts.

There's also the Systems Dynamics course at MIT open courseware

This course by Odum's grad student Charles Hall is also pretty good. He's a bit abrasive at times and you should skip the first lecture but overall the course is quite relevant. He also has a book Energy and the Wealth of Nations.

Yale course has two relevant course to permaculture. This course on population is quite important in understanding how population can drive ecological crisis. And there is a basic ecology course that is useful if you haven't taken this stuff before.

It's also worth digging into the complex systems and sustainability literature. These two conferences are quite good for that. As well look into the Santa Fe Institutes Ulam lecture series.

This Elaine Ingham lecture series on soil science is also great.

I'd also highly recommend looking at some of the work of Elinor Ostrum. She's quite important in the sustainability literature and her frameworks are very useful in thinking about and designing social ecological systems.

Another suggestion would be to form a reading group to read through the designer's manual while watching either the mollison lectures i linked to or the one from the 1983 lectures that you can find in torrent packs. Have everyone pick a chapter of the designers manual and do more research so that they can facilitate that chapter and direct discussion. I would also strongly recommend you read the designer's manual in conjunction with the lectures because the designer's manual is better as a reference than as primary material. I think that doing a directed reading with videos in a group setting would get you pretty close to what you would get out of a PDC. The group aspect is important because you need to have a network people with whom you have a common language and are thinking in whole systems to start building many of these projects. Having a network of permaculture folks around is one of the big benefits of a pdc and you won't get that with self study.

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Good beginning. Next, read, watch and listen to anything you can find of Bill Mollison. That means, read Permaculture One and Two, and Permaculture: A Designer's Manual. 

The latter is the 'bible' and is worth reading, and necessary to read, several times. You can find most of the above as torrents on The Pirate Bay. Also, watch the entire recorded 

Permaculture Design Certificate courses, available on The Pirate Bay. In fact, that might be a good place to start; i.e., with the lectures. Watch the film, The Global Gardener, 

available on YouTube. Subscribe via RSS feed to the many Permaculture websites you can find from a Google search. Read the transcripts and listen to the interviews of 

Bill Mollison, Geoff Lawton, and David Holmgen, available on the Internet. Take a PDC from a good teacher if you can afford it. Volunteer as a WOOFer or join a local group for practical experience.

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--
Lawrence F. London, Jr.
lfljvenaura@gmail.com







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