Forest Gardening - Teacher Training

Ecological Vision & Practical Application to a Regenerative Future

Forest Gardening is a unique course combining the ancient wisdom of Ecological Design, Deep Ecology and Forest Gardening with the application of Regenerative Practices.

Forest Gardening is experiencing Gaia in Action. It is the ancient art of rooting to place.

You can create a beautiful, diverse, high-yield garden. If planned and created with attention and a deep understanding of ecosystem function, you can also achieve a primarily self-maintaining garden.

“Those concerned with the full implications of the ecological crisis which we now face generally agree that urgent steps should be taken to plant many millions of trees. There is no reason why many of the desperately needed new trees should not be fruit trees planted in people’s gardens and public green spaces comprising of fruit and nut trees, fruiting bushes and climbers, as well as herbs and perennial vegetables.” ~Robert Hart, Pioneer and Originator of the term forest gardening

Forest ecosystems exhibit numerous advantageous properties we humans would be wise to follow: they sustain, restore, enrich and increase themselves without human efforts; they build, store, and maintain clean water, clean air, nutrients, soil quality, and biodiversity; and they create stability, resilience, and adaptability. These qualities transpire from the dynamics of the forest as a whole system, not from any one or more of the elements that comprise the woods alone.

We can provide universal access to fresh, healthy organic food, green our cities, and protect biodiversity. With this poetic and pragmatic action, we can commit to our town’s environmental and community health and the next generation!

Intuition and common sense tell us that we are one with the Earth. If our world is sick and poisoned, then so are we. If the forests are being destroyed, we die a little with each felling. Humanity faces the beautiful reality that we are part of a ‘shared planet.’

We are at a turning point on the planet, realizing that the intimate embrace of our world is a healing force moving humanity towards a transformation in our relationship with the Earth, each other and ourselves.

Having studied and integrated the various aspects of forest gardening, you may feel called to share what you have learned with others. Certified forest garden educators will be able to facilitate this wisdom-centred course. Each training includes practical instruction, which you can apply immediately into your daily life.

The forest gardening correspondence course can be taken individually or as a part of the diploma course. Previous organic gardening or forest gardening practice, no experience is required. This educational process is for people from all walks of life who are enthusiastic about bringing the path of the forest gardening lifestyle practice into their own lives and to their communities.

“When the world wearies, and society fails to satisfy, There is always the garden.”

~Minnie Aumonier

Become a Forest Garden Educator – An Active Agent in the Transformational Shift

This teacher training is for those wanting to learn how to create gardens that sustain humans and nature, are easy to manage, require few tools and give you the highest quality food. Regenerative Forest Gardening gets its inspiration and direction from observing and following the patterns of nature and how she creates gardens that sustain and nourish all life.

This ecological mentorship approach teaches the skills necessary to become confident in the applications of designing with local plants and trees. Between time in the gardens, fieldwork and classroom presentations, you will experience lots of hands-on learning and application of ecological design processes. You will also learn how to identify nutritional and medicinal plants during your field studies.

The ecological perspective of this course supports a deepening of your connection to the deep ecology of nature and plant understanding. Its primary focus is on the roots of regeneration and the practical skills in forest gardening design. Learn a solid, wholistic, ecological worldview while simultaneously getting hands-on solutions practice that demonstrates how to create a regenerative, abundant and rewarding lifestyle. At the end of this in-depth study course, you’ll have the working knowledge and ability to go out and make a difference in your neighbourhood as a community forest garden designer and educator.

This course is an integrated part of the mentorship program, which runs annually. It is an empowering and hands-on experiential way to learn. Learn more>

The Forest Gardening Diploma Process

An ecological garden is designed to benefit humans and the surrounding, interwoven natural world. We aim to enhance nature’s ways, with our strategy to ‘work with nature’ rather than against her. We choose techniques that rebuild soil and nutrients rather than disrupt soil communities, and we carefully select diverse plant communities to be self-reliant, self-maintaining, and self-renewing. The ultimate goal is to establish a garden in harmony with nature’s patterns, resulting in a landscape that requires less maintenance.

To qualify for the Forest Gardening Educator’s Diploma course, the following pre-requisites must be completed:

* Completion of our Forest Gardening Correspondence Course

* Completion of our Forest Gardening Mentorship & through an ecological process.

The Forest Gardening Diploma Process is divided into three parts:

Part 1: Correspondence Course

The correspondence course comes with an approach Adobe DVD Reader and textbooks with the essential material to provide you with the information and instruction needed to become a Forest Gardening Educator.

The textbooks you will receive will be reference books from forest gardening and ecology leaders as essential parts of your study. After completing each section, you will be asked to submit the lesson and assignment for review and feedback.

After completing the correspondence course and mentorship program, you will be asked to write a thesis paper and research project to evaluate your competence and the practices and principles of Forest Gardening. The estimated time for completion of the course is one to two years.

Part 2: Completion of the Mentorship Program

Completion of our Forest Gardening Mentorship Program

The Mentorship will be available approximately one 3-day training weekend each year from early spring to late fall, plus our Living the Experience 7-Day Immersion. See our Forest Gardening Mentorship Program for dates>

Part 3: The Completion of a Thesis & Research Project

This includes Six One-to-One Tutorial Sessions

The One-to-One Tutorial Sessions are offered as an essential aspect of this course to both support and guide you in deepening your advanced ecological studies. You pick a specific topic/aspect of forest garden design that you want to understand and articulate as a written thesis and a research project you can offer to your community.

Upon completing this uniquely designed educational process, you can become a Forest Garden Designer and Educator. As a certified instructor, your relationship with The Living Arts Institute will be of the network of teachers.

Course Hours

This 420-hour diploma course will consist of instruction in core forest gardens subjects such as a local plant materia medica, designing wholesome, dynamic, and resilient ecosystems using temperate forests as models; the site walks, 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, plant botany, field studies, plant identification, and ecosystem ecology. You will be inspired and empowered to design food forests for yourself, your friends, and your local community.

130 Mentorship Classroom and Hands-On Hours in our Forest Gardening 3-Day training weekends, Living the Experience: 7-Day Intensive, Local Wild Living Design workshop, plus a two-day graduation weekend.

120 Correspondence Course Study Hours

150 Thesis and Research Hours

15 Field Study Hours

5 One-on-One Tutorial Hours
—–|
420 Total Hours

“By learning, you will teach; by teaching, you will understand.”

~Latin Proverb

Forest Gardening Diploma FAQ

Our aim in forest garden design is for a state of ‘regeneration’ of the earth’s natural life systems. Not only do we aim to maintain and sustain biological systems – here we aim to improve them!

We plan for cultural shifts in the face of climate change, diminished fossil fuel supply, and economic turns – in our communities across the globe, in our local bioregions, and at home. We employ techniques and strategies for renewing earth systems, work that is deeply connected to renewal.

What are the prerequisites for completing the Diploma Course?

• We are incorporating the Practices and Ethics of the Path of the Forest Gardener into one’s lifestyle.
• Attendance and Completion of:

Completion of our Forest Gardening Correspondence Course

Completion of our Forest Gardening Mentorship Program

Completion of a Thesis Paper & Research Project

• Writing a 5,000-word thesis
• Conducting a research project and presentation at the end of the course of the study

When will I receive the Correspondence Course?

Some people realize they want to become forest gardening educators after attending one or more training courses. The Correspondence and Mentorship program course can be applied once you know this is the direction you wish to take.

The Correspondence and Mentorship program course provides foundational information and will support the education you receive during the mentorship weekends. Therefore, it can be incorporated into your course of study and practice as soon as you are ready.

The Correspondence Course will be mailed to you within 10-14 days of registration. The Correspondence course provides foundational information and will support your training education.

How long will it take to become certified?

After receiving the Correspondence Course, all participants will have two years to complete the program.

What does it mean to be Certified?

You can become a Forest Gardening Designer and Educator upon completing this uniquely designed program, the correspondence course and teacher training.

519-652-0230 or 519-652-9109

The Forest Gardening Profession

No culture, ancient or modern, did not use plants as part of their natural way of life.

The forest gardener’s path comes from a long lineage of responsible living practices. Forest Gardeners of today is a relatively new career in North America. Many are self-employed, operating their consulting practice, growing edible or medicinal plants for sale to customers, or educating the general public. Teaching positions are becoming available in colleges and schools’ continuing education programs.

If you are enthusiastic about working with plants and people, if you would like to learn more about the transformative power of a forest garden and how to use them to enrich your life, and how to share this leading-edge information with others, then the Forest Gardening Diploma Course is for you.

Discover how to teach and empower others to experience lasting health, a soulful connection with nature, and be of service to humanity and the Earth through our group and individual one-on-one training.

Become a part of the expanding living mycelium network.

Imagine … making a living doing what you love while supporting others and the planet.

Is this Program for You?

If you agree to more than five of the following statements, this Forest Gardening course may be for you!

1. I want to start a successful practice as a Forest Gardening Designer and Educator.
2. I want professional training to help me implement the skills and techniques to motivate and inspire others in a regenerative lifestyle.
3. I want access to leading-edge, up-to-date education from forest gardeners, foremost thinkers, and authors.
4. I want to be around radiant, healthy and motivated people – who want to support others to be healthy and reach their optimal potential.
5. Incorporating edible and medicinal plants is a common-sense approach to living a vibrant life.
6. I could enhance my educational background with the many lifestyle approaches of plants and trees.
7. I can benefit from deepening my connection nature.
8. I see myself as a forest gardener educator.

You may join The Living Centre’s network team after completing your course.

A Growing Need

The Forest Gardening course takes you back to the source of working with plants, where lifestyle practices become a way of life. Through plant identification, ecological pattern design, regenerative gardening practices and reconnection with the Elements, you will be given a wholistic model of forest gardening education that brings lasting results.

Forest Gardening is an innovative process that facilitates the well-being and deep ecology issues needed in this modern world. Forest Gardening is an excellent preventative natural system with a lineage to the beginning of time.

Creating a Fulfilling Career

Upon completing the Forest Gardening Course, you will be eligible to create a career as an ecological Forest Gardening Educator. Assessing the emergent popularity of the natural living arts, a Regenerative Forest Garden Educator career is rewarding and fulfilling, knowing you are making a difference.

The principles of forest gardening can be taught and applied through workshops in schools and colleges, ecology centers, and professional institutions that incorporate innovative processes to educate their staff and employees about preventive health and well-being.

Opportunity Potentials

Choosing a Regenerative Forest Gardening Educator career will open doors of opportunities in various environmental education centers and institutions. Or you may desire the scheduling flexibility that being a private Forest Gardening Educator can give you. Either way, life as a Forest Gardening Educator enables you to experience continual growth for yourself in a regenerative lifestyle and enjoy the noble opportunity of service to others.

Career Opportunities

• The Organic and Ecological Activities
• Teaching and Private Landscape Tutoring
• Educational Consulting Design Services
• Natural Health, Wellness Centers and Resorts
• Wholistic Stores that are interested in setting an example of Sustainability
• Ecological, Environmental & Nature Centers
• Include in your already existing wellness practice

Follow your Bliss, and Fulfillment will Follow!

Forest Gardening is Beyond Just an Amazing Concept – it’s a Campaign!

Are you looking to take forest gardening to the next level?

“My vision is to inspire and educate individuals about the benefits of forest gardens from climate change to relocalization of food and medicine sources and creating sanctuaries of human settlement in our communities. To do this, we will help eager-to-learn participants and interns design and install these living systems.”

“The goal is to have 10,000 forest gardens in Carolinian, Canada, by the end of 2017. And multiple to one million by 2020.
I have no doubt we will get there as the realities of relocalization campaigns continue to expand.” ~Shantree Kacera

I believe that an essential aspect of stopping energy descent and global warming is relocalizing community resource requirements worldwide. Food, water, social interaction, fuel, and energy can all be created or accomplished locally. As a forest garden educator, I see the aesthetic that people here in Southwestern Ontario want. This cultural landscape aesthetic is devastating, energy-intense, reasonably useless, impractical and unnatural. My goal and vision are to accelerate the paradigm shift in this bioregion in the way that individuals view the aesthetics of landscapes and empower landowners to realize their precious land as a functional and well-designed part of their lives, a base of their resource necessities and a solution to global scale concerns (i.e., Climate Change, environmental destruction, etc.)

The objective is to train as many forest gardeners as possible to be confident designers and installers of these living systems. As we change the community aesthetic, the market for food forests should start to spread to larger and larger scales. This will require many knowledgeable and experienced forest gardeners to undertake these projects. One part of this goal is to help the forest garden movement get out of the cycle of always offering advanced training to inspired students and interns, which requires a lot of capital. We want to be able to provide affordable training and courses to individuals. We need to get the forest gardening movement out of the financial groove and help provide the right livelihood for those who want to make a career out of forest gardening.

Along with this is transitioning rural farms and orchards to more diverse and perennial food forest garden systems. The other desire is to transform vacant city lots and public parks into food forest garden systems that deliver a surplus of resources for local neighbourhoods and wildlife. This is happening and expanding as part of our work here at The Living Centre, and we will continue to thrust for more and more of this in our campaign.

We need enthusiastic individuals to be part of this solution. Join us in reforesting your bioregion.

“Few of us are in a position to restore the forests. But tens of millions have gardens or access to open spaces, such as industrial wastelands, where trees can be planted. and if full advantage can be taken of the potentialities available even in heavily built-up areas, new ‘city forests’ can arise…” ~Robert A de J Hart was the pioneer of forest gardening in the UK in the early 1960s

Forest Gardening Diploma Tuition

A forest garden is designed to benefit humans and the surrounding, interwoven natural world. We aim to enhance nature’s ways, with our strategy to ‘work with nature’ rather than against her. We choose techniques that rebuild soil and nutrients rather than disrupt soil communities, and we carefully select diverse plant communities to be self-reliant, self-maintaining, and self-renewing. The ultimate goal is to establish a garden in harmony with nature’s patterns, resulting in a landscape that requires less maintenance.

Course Investment:

Standard Tuition Package is $4675.

Certificate Package $4000.

Save $675 from the standard price when you pay the tuition in full upon registration.

Tuition when paid in full – $4000. CAD.

Includes:

• All hands-on mentorship weekends
• One-on-one tutoring sessions
• Handouts 
• Correspondence course material
• Textbooks

It does not include HST tax, meals or accommodations in the diploma educational process.