Chesapeake Forest Gardens
A Permaculture Design Certificate Course 

Edible Landscapes ~ Forests and Watersheds

In this twelve-day course over the span of eight months, you will dive deeply into the vision and practice of creating wholesome, dynamic, and resilient edible ecosystems using temperate deciduous forests as models.  The teaching team will offer lectures, site walks, and experiential exercises to help you understand how the architecture, social structure, underground economics, and successional processes of natural forests apply in the design of edible ecosystems of all kinds.   We'll also learn about and practice water harvesting & storage options, biointensive gardening, reading patterns in natural systems, and understanding the cultural shifts required to transition in co-creating mindful communities of abundance. 

Early Bird Special through March 31, 2013 ~ $1000 

Starting April 1, 2013--Registration fee is $1100

Sign up early!  Spaces are limited.

Open to all regardless of experience...

Register Now!

Bios of Instructors 

Lincoln Smith runs Forested, a forest garden company in Bowie, MD.  He is passionate about production ecosystems, and brings a background in agronomic science and sustainable landscape design.  He helps landowners throughout the eastern US create successful forest gardens through training at the Forested demonstration garden. Lincoln spent 5 years in a high-end residential landscape architecture office, designing and managing installations of fancy landscapes, and pushing sustainability. He holds a Master of Arts in Landscape Design from the Conway School, and earned LEED certification in 2008.

Kim Walsh has worked in the field of human rights/popular education and on economic justice issues for the past 12 years prior to shifting her focus to sustainable agriculture and building community through food. In 2009, she co-founded an organic farm business at Wild Meadows Farm in Bedford, PA, which practices biointensive and permaculture principles. Kim also serves as a part-time Executive Director of Chesapeake Education,Arts and Research Society (CHEARS), an environmental non-profit based in Greenbelt, Maryland  where she assists with numerous volunteer driven projects including the Three Sisters Demonstration Gardens and the Greenbelt Food Forest projects. She received her Permaculture Design Course Certificate in 2008 and PDC teaching certificate in 2011. She co-organized and team taught two residential Permaculture Design Courses at Wild Meadows Farm with Darrell Frey, Dave Jacke, Juliette Jones and friends. She holds a BA in International Human Rights and recently completed an Accrediation Course in Organic Land Care by NOFA. 

Bios of Guest Speakers 

Dr. Robert Cahalan is Director of Sun-Climate Research at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Maryland.  He recently retired as Chief of Goddard’s Climate and Radiation Laboratory, and President of the International Radiation Commission.   He has held several jobs related to climate change, and has been doing science research for more than 40 years. He loves science, building scientific instruments,
and using them to discover how the universe works.  Here’s what Bob says about his life journey: “Clouds are endlessly fascinating for their many complex and beautiful properties, and important for Earth’s climate because they control the flow of energy in the atmosphere, and the supply of energy to the oceans. At Goddard I designed a laser system with multiple views, like a bee’s eye, showing that it can see through clouds to measure their thickness, naming it THOR, for “Thickness from Offbeam Returns.” I have flown THOR over Oklahoma, Central America, and Antarctica, measuring clouds, ice, and snow. I discovered that clouds have an “effective thickness” depending on their “fractal” properties, an idea now used in global climate models.

Lesley Riddle is Assistant Director of Public Works for the City of Greenbelt, Maryland. Ms. Riddle holds degrees in Business from Colorado Technical University, Masters of Science in Environmental Science from Green Mountain College, and Graduate Studies in Sustainable Landscape Design from George Washington University. Her education has provided both a fiscal and environmental responsible management outlook, which helps to administer both financial and ecological resources. While working at a large non-profit organization providing jobs and training for people with disabilities, she created and carried out a state of the industry training program for front-line employees and managers. She was an instrumental part of major renovations and installation projects at BWI Airport and The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Ms. Riddle has worked on the planning and implementation of several stream restorations and is directing a thorough study and inventory of the extensive urban tree canopy in Greenbelt.

Greg Zahn has run Zahn Design Architects since 1990 and designed over 400 buildings in the DC area. He has recently immersed himself in sustainable food production, taking a permaculture design certificate course in Kenya, and spending the summer of 2012 working on organic farms in Nova Scotia. He is passionate about helping people improve the quality of their lives while improving the condition of the environment.

Wystan Gladish Simons has been interested in “living off the land” and living sustainably for all of her 49 years.  She began her education in vegetable gardening by marrying a man with a subscription to “Organic Gardening Magazine.”  She has about 20 years of growing, canning, and jamming under her belt.  She and her husband Edward live on ¾ acre in suburbia outside DC, surrounded by vegetable plots, fruit trees, brambles, chickens, and of course compost piles. They continue to learn how to manage their land and chickens in harmonious ways inspired by books by Harvey Ussery, Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver, and Edward Smith.  This season her goal is to learn to use a dehydrator, and to keep the squirrels out of their peach trees – possibly by adding squirrel to the sustainable local menu…  The meat is supposed to be delicious...can she do it?  When not working her “suburban farm” or being a mom and homemaker, Wystan is a writer of poetry, screenplays, essays and stories.