Milkwood are proud to announce Dave Jacke is coming to Australia in March to share his extensive knowledge in designing both urban and rural regenerative food, fiber and community systems, using forest ecologies as a model.

This is a special chance to learn from a world leading permaculturalist and forest ecology designer, thinker and teacher.

Dave Jacke’s Advanced Permaculture Design courses and his Forest Garden Design Intensives are somewhat legendary in the USA. However, in Australia he’s better known as the primary author of Edible Forest Gardens, a set of award winning books which encapsulate the theory and design of food forest garden systems.

Setting out strategies for designing food forest gardens for backyards, rooftops, homesteads and small farms, Edible Forest Gardens vol I & II are quoted as being the books that “will define the intellectual territory of its subject for at least a generation…” What we folks Down Under are not so aware of is that Dave is also at the forefront of advanced permaculture and forest garden systems design teaching. As said, his courses in the USA are legendary as being some of the most well thought-out and applied permaculture design intensives on the planet, enabling students to accelerate their design skills from good intentions to solid skillsets.

While we have a great wealth of permaculture design knowledge in Australia, we certainly don’t have anyone quite like Dave Jacke. So in the interests of upskilling our nation as much as we possibly can for an uncertain future, we decided to bring out this far reaching thinker, teacher and regenerative designer to skill us up on applied temperate forest ecosystem design.

While he’s here, Dave will be leading a Forest Garden Design Intensive at Milkwood Farm, a 9-day design course which will see students immersed in the vision, theory, and practice of designing wholesome, dynamic, and resilient edible ecosystems, using temperate deciduous forests as models.

You don’t need a Permaculture Design Certificate to attend, you just need to be ready to learn how to design resilient systems.

Dave Jacke teaching Forest Garden design in context

Design for a densely stacked, urban forest garden

Rooftop forest garden in London

The Forest Garden Design Intensive is recommended for active permaculture teachers, designers and practitioners, from beginning to experienced, who are looking to truly grow their design skills.

This course is also recommended for landscape designers, farmers, community gardeners, teachers, horticulturalists, homesteaders and anyone else wanting to progress their abilities to design and create stable, successful, resilient food producing forest ecologies on any scale.

Planning ahead for how mature trees interact, and what that means for the rest of your polyculture system

The emerging forest garden at Milkwood Farm – a stable and resilient system providing fruit, herbs, tubers, nuts, berries, medicines, biodiversity, shelter, stability and beauty for the homestead below.

In addition to the Design Intensive, Dave will be giving public talks in Sydney and Melbourne,  2-day workshops in Sydney and Melbourne, and a one-day workshop in Tasmania.

All of which are a great chance to listen up and skill up in designing and creating regenerative systems, with one of the world’s finest. Don’t miss it. We’ll see you there.

>> Dave Jacke’s full Australian tour is here.

Organising and realizing this tour is a really big deal for us! Please help us get the word out there. We’re really excited to be bringing this knowledge to Australia and enhancing our national capital of designers and practitioners, for the benefit of all our current and future communities. Please help us spread the word. Thank you!