Permaculture Teacher Training with Focus on Children
Family Friendly (Denmark)
July 16 - 24, 2027
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Event Dates:
16/07/2027
to
24/07/2027
Registration End Date (Book Early To Avoid Disappointment!):
16/07/2027
Event Location:
Vestjyllands Folk High School (Denmark)
Effective Teaching for a Changing World
A Course Designed by
Rosemary Morrow.
Organised & Facilitated by Alfred Decker & Lusi Alderslowe.
While this course has a specific focus in how to facilitate permaculture education for children, the training is designed for anyone who wants to teach permaculture based on Rosemary’s participatory learning methods.
It is a family-friendly course, so please bring your kids!
Ready to inspire others with permaculture?
The Permaculture Teacher Training with Focus on Children (PTTC) is an exciting opportunity for you to learn to teach permaculture creatively to people of all ages. Whether you are intending to teach in communities, gardens, woods, schools, kindergartens/nurseries, higher or further education, or simply to your own children, we will equip you with the skills you need to help children and adults learn permaculture in a fun and meaningful way. This intensive training will provide you with an invaluable toolkit to use throughout your life!
Why this training?
The PTTC empowers you to:
- Build teaching confidence and overcome fears of public speaking or facilitation
- Transform education into dynamic, participatory learning spaces
- Gain hands-on experience for teaching with adults and children
- Design and deliver impactful courses that create real change in your students’ lives
- Join a global community of supportive, like-minded teachers
What makes this training unique?
Global: Learn alongside participants from around the world, building international connections. Our previous students have found future teaching collaborators on this training.
Practical and Hands-On: Get real teaching practice in a supportive environment.
Supportive Community: Join a network of experienced trainers and fellow learners to exchange ideas and support.
Whether you want to run full PDCs or smaller courses and workshops, this training will help you connect with your audience and teach with confidence and passion.
This course is for...
PDC holders in any of the following fields: teachers of students of all ages, of architecture, landscape design, schools, /community gardeners, kindergarten/nursery educators, local government community development officers, forest school practitioners, ecology and other disciplines including geography, regenerative agriculture and agroforestry as well as permaculture design. If you’re looking to do any type of sustainability or permaculture education/communication, this is the course you’ve been waiting for!
- Design a short or a long course
- Develop clear course outcomes and ethics
- Adopt appropriate body behaviour and use nonviolent communication
- Manage the business side of teaching: budgeting, marketing, and course organisation
- Prepare learning resources and use teaching tools effectively for both virtual and in-person environments
- Organise classroom and learning environments
- Work with a broad range of people from different cultures and backgrounds
- Draw on strategies that promote thinking and integrate practical experience
- Deliver clear explanations and concepts
- Explain the structure and function of the Permaculture Design Course
- Build a resilient teaching mindset to inspire confidence in yourself and your students
- Work collaboratively in groups
- Practice teaching in a safe, supportive community of peers
We require all students to have completed a PDC (anywhere in the world) before the course starting date. If you are unable to do this before the training but really want to attend, please contact us.
Focus on Permaculture Education for Children
In addition to the core teacher training content, the PTTC has a specific focus on how to facilitate permaculture education for children.
Co-facilitator Lusi Alderslowe is the co-founder of Permaculture Children, which has in its aim “to empower educators around the world to share permaculture education and design with children. In permaculture education it is important to integrate creativity, practicals, discussions, songs, visual aids, spontaneity and other dynamic teaching methods. This is especially so with children. We want to excite and inspire people into learning without even realising they are learning! This training is for anyone involved in the education of children – school & nursery teachers, forest school leaders, nature kindergarten teachers, parents, grandparents, carers and other educators.”
Community
You will be part of an international community during this training. Previous participants testify to the value of learning and practicing in a supportive group; making global connections and even finding future teaching collaborators!
When
Arrival – July 16, 2027 @ 17h CEST
Departure – July 24 @ 11h CEST
It may be possible to arrive and depart at other times depending on your travel schedule.
Where
Vestjyllands Højskole is a Danish folk high school in the tradition of independent schools offering non-formal adult education. Here, learning goes far beyond the classroom: At Vestjyllands Højskole, students become part of a lively community with open skies and space to explore life.
At Vestjyllands Højskole, sustainability is a living part of everyday life. Our meals are 90–100% organic, and we grow many of our vegetables in the school garden. We produce our own CO₂-neutral energy and integrate eco-friendly practices across all areas of school life.
Family-Friendly
This teacher training is the only one we know of that allows parents to fully participate while benefiting from onsite childcare.
In addition, the activities offered give children the opportunity to observe, explore, and connect with nature through their heads, hearts, and hands.
The children’s program is adapted to children aged 5 to 14 and is developed in parallel with permaculture themes, including:
Exploratory adventures: immersion in nature and discovery of the four elements — Earth, Fire, Water, and Air
Art, nature, and cooperative games
Sharing practices: talking circles, gratitude circles, and self connection tools (Sit Spot)
Permaculture and sustainability principles woven into daily life through small, practical activities
The children’s program is led by Daniella Querol, an artist, educator, and permaculturalist who lives in a collective project in Catalonia, Spain. Daniella speaks English, German, Spanish, and Catalan. For more information about her work, click HERE.
Parents wishing to bring their children can coordinate specific needs with Daniella by writing to her HERE.
The PTTC Facilitation Team
Lead Facilitators (In-person)
Alfred Decker (he/him)
Alfred Decker (he/him) is an award-winning permaculture designer; the Education Coordinator of Permaculture For Refugees; a certified educator with the Permaculture Association of Britain; a leading voice in Social Permaculture; and one of Europe’s innovative permaculture educators. His journey into ecological design began in 1998 when he completed his first Permaculture Design Course in California. Since then, Alfred has been involved with social movements and projects across many borders.
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He is the founder of the 12P Permaculture Design consultancy, Permacultura Barcelona and the Forest Gardens project at Can Masdeu ; is a co-founder of the Spanish Permaculture Academy (Academia de Permacultura Íbera); and was a member of the European Permaculture Teachers Partnership and the Permaculture Council of Europe. Alfred holds a post graduate diploma in sustainable architecture and renewable energy (Centre for Alternative Technology).
After taking a PTT course with Rosemary Morrow in 2011, he undertook a two year mentorship and later co-facilitated six courses as her assistant, ultimately earning a Diploma in Permaculture Education & Community Development in 2013 through the Blue Mountains Permaculture Institute (Australia). Committed to furthering the PTT course that Rosemary developed in over four decades of teaching experience around the world, Alfred facilitated over 20 PTT courses as lead facilitator and co-edited all three versions of the PTT manual. Rosemary has asked him to organise the PTT trainings in Europe, and he has developed an online version of the course on the Permaculture Association of Britain’s online educational platform.
In 2024 Alfred joined the Global Council of Permaculture For Refugees. He is passionate about how permaculture can be useful to refugees and migrants, and how permaculture education can be designed for them as learners…and how they in turn can best share their valuable knowledge and experience with others.
In early 2026, Alfred founded the Permaculture Barcelona Hub, where the training will be based.
Lusi Alderslowe (she/her)
Lusi Alderslowe is a permaculture educator of adults and children: an author of the Children in Permaculture Manual, a Permaculture Design Course teacher, an outdoor maths specialist, co-founder of Children in Permaculture, Children in Permaculture qualified trainer of teachers, a senior tutor for the Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design, a Forest School Leader, a Branching Out Leader, a LAND/ScotLAND tutor, a Trainer of Teachers, and LGBTQ+. I have been teaching permaculture since 2009 and love to integrate different types of activities to cater for different learning styles.
Read More
Children in Permaculture Manual
Taking Maths Outdoors with your Child
Taking Literacy Outdoors with your Child
What I do:
- Teach permaculture-related training and courses including Introduction to Permaculture, Introduction to Engaging Children in Permaculture, Permaculture Design Certificates, Children in Permaculture Practitioners Courses, Permaculture Teacher Training and bespoke courses (e.g. family permaculture.
- Facilitate Practical Workshops e.g. build a herb spiral, design your own garden,
- Tutor for the Diploma in Applied Permaculture design, as a senior tutor.
- Coordinate and facilitate events and projects which promote permaculture with adults and/or children, including nature connection.
- Create resources for sharing permaculture and encouraging nature connection.
- Engage children and adults in opportunities to learn from nature including through Forest Schools, Branching Out (nature connection for mental health of adults), outdoor learning (e.g. maths, literacy and/or health and wellbeing).
Guest Facilitators (Online)
Rosemary Morrow
Rosemary is known and loved worldwide as a permaculture teacher, practitioner, and activist. She has travelled the globe for four decades, often in countries shattered by war and disasters, sharing her passion for permaculture and social justice. Her belief is that access to useful knowledge is a basic human right.
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Several years ago, Rosemary decided to focus on teacher training courses in order to have a “multiplier effect”, believing that the bottleneck keeping permaculture from growing more rapidly is not a shortage of curriculum and experience, but rather a shortage of competent permaculture teachers. So she created this training to give people the skills and confidence needed to take the big step from being a practitioner to becoming a teacher.
Her pragmatic and effective approach working with and being led by local people has created community-scale permaculture projects and outcomes across a broad range of environments from drylands in Ethiopia, to the wet tropics of Vietnam. The knowledge and experience she brings to creating abundance, food security and successful sustainable farming models is unparalleled in permaculture education today. She is the author of the Earth Restorer’s Guide to Permaculture, the Earth User’s Guide to Teaching Permaculture, The Family Seedsaving Book, and A Good Home Forever.
Starhawk
One of the foremost voices in Earth-based spirituality, Starhawk is an author, activist, and permaculture teacher and designer. Her 13 books include such beloved reads as The Spiral Dance, The Earth Path, and The Fifth Sacred Thing. Starhawk drew from 30 years of living collectively to write The Empowerment Manual, which is the basis for her social permaculture course, Empowering Collaborative Groups.
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Starhawk has been recognized by the Permaculture Institute of North America (PINA) as a leading figure in permaculture and has been awarded dual diplomas for excellence in education and permaculture site design. As a teacher of magical activism and permaculture education, Starhawk’s life work takes her across the globe. She currently lives part-time in San Francisco in a collective house with her partner and friends, and part-time in a little hut in the woods in Cazadero, California, where she practices permaculture in her extensive gardens and writes.
Prices & Registration
We offer a sliding scale in order to support people who have less access to finances, and enable those with more to pay more. We have created this sliding scale based on people in Europe, and appreciate that those in the majority world will be able to pay the unwaged fee even if they are waged. When we release the tickets there are only two unwaged places available, however, with more organisational or good wage fees paid, additional unwaged places can become available.
Training Fees – Very Early Bird Special
Book by 21st December, 2026 to get a very early bird discount!:
€1670 – You Earn A Good Wage
€1200 – Waged
€975 – Low Wage
€750 – Unwaged
The above fees include bringing your own tent with access to bathroom and toilet wagon, with all meals included.
After the Very Early Bird Special ends, the fees will be:
€1870 – You Earn A Good Wage
€1400 – Waged
€1175 – Low Wage
€900 – Unwaged
Enhanced Accomodation
If you would like Small cabin or tent with beds, linen, food, please pay an additional €70/week.
If you would like a room with linen, sink and shared bathroom, please pay an additional €210/week.
Additional Adult
If you want to come with an additional adult (e.g., a partner who is doing childcare and not participating in the course), their fees including all meals will be:
– Camping: €390
– Tent or cabin with bed €470
– Room with shared bathroom: €610
Children
Accommodation & food:
– Camping: €190/child
– Tent or cabin with bed: €225
– Room with shared bathroom: €290
– Children’s Program: €200
Payment Plan
Pay the deposit now. You can then pay the rest in instalments at your convenience, for example you could set up a monthly standing order.
Payment deadlines: half of the course fee by the 21st December 2026 to secure your early bird fee.
Pay in full 30 days before the course start date.
Refund Policy
If you make a payment plan, the deposit is non-refundable. For anything paid on top of that, the refund policy is:
- 30+ days before start of training: 75% Refund
- 15–29 days before start of training: 50% Refund
- Less than 14 days before start of training: No Refund Possible
If you have booked a room, the same cancellation policy applies to the accommodation fee.
Scholarships
We also have some pay-what-you-can scholarships for members of marginalised communities and people of color working in environmental and social justice movements. That is part of our way of supporting reparations and of bringing in more diversity to our permaculture movement. If you are a member of a marginalised community, BIPOC or a refugee/migrant and interested in one of these scholarships, please fill in a scholarship application form HERE.
Included in Your Fees
- Delicious food during eight nights and seven days, starting with an opening dinner and ending with a breakfast
- A teacher training certificate
- A pack of digital teaching resources
- Option to buy a printed copy of the training manual at the cost of printing
- Practical teaching experience
- Live calls with Rosemary Morrow & Starhawk
- A new generation of permaculture teachers and doers for you to join!
What do others say about the training?
