testimonial

I had been self-studying permaculture for several years and found OSU’s free online content very useful.  After purchasing a property in the spring of 2021, I decided to pursue OSU’s Permaculture Design Certificate to strengthen my experience and develop the skills I need to design and create my own permaculture paradise.

I am extremely grateful to have completed this course and feel the value far exceeded the cost.  The course fostered my deep dive into permaculture and the local ecology, and helped me make the most out of the observation and research phase.  The exercises prompt you to analyze your site holistically, and organize your project, so that the final design almost comes together on its own.  The template consolidates and structures what could otherwise have been an overwhelming amount of content.  It was also an extremely productive series of exercises for me as a first-time homeowner to better understand my property and how all of my systems work.

I feel particularly fortunate to have had Javan Bernakevitch as my instructor.  His depth of knowledge, personal experience, and patience in answering my many questions helped me fully understand my project.  I also appreciated his philosophical approach to permaculture, from values-based decision making to finding your zones of brilliance.

Ultimately, taking this course saved me time, labor, and money, and I personally recommend it for anyone considering a PDC.

Thank you so much Javan for guiding us! You were so kind and gracious with the feedback (truth be told I was kind of dreading that part of the course before I started) but you were so encouraging and awesome that I think I actually got over my fear of failure completely!

This course was awesome, I learned a lot, got to connect with a lot of awesome people and I am so looking forward to seeing all of your projects implemented!

Javan, man, it was a tremendous blessing and joy taking this course under your care and stewardship. Thank you so much for sharing yourself and your passion with us. I really appreciate all of your advice, the questions you posed that allowed me to look from various vantage points, and the many gems you bestowed upon us during office hours. Permaculture is pretty new to me, I’m still reading Mollison’s book, so I really can’t thank you enough because you didn’t take a second of time with us for granted and you were a wellspring of knowledge. I know that in everything you did you wanted to give us a significant step up in our abilities as future designers and to those like me who are so new to the world of Permaculture, that was HUGE. You played a crucial role in helping me develop my observational skills and the freedom you allowed us to have with our presentation opened up to some surprising places of creativity within me. It was such a fun, challenging and rewarding experience and I’m so excited to continue with my education, design and journey.

Your feedback meant a lot to me, and it has since week one. My wife listens to your feedback videos with me, and your encouragement meant a great deal to her too. You didn’t know it, but she was also a student of yours this year and she says she likes the cut of your jib!

I wanted to express my gratitude to you for being an amazing & nurturing mentor and grader. I learned so much every time I was able to attend your office hours, and I always appreciated the feedback from your videos. I have to fight a lot of critical thoughts and every time I watched your feedback videos I felt a surge of pride, inspiration, and motivation.  Thank you so much for your wisdom, kindness, and patience. I expect to grow within this field and I hope to cross paths again the future.

I hosted an outdoor documentary movie night as part of a free series of events called Neighbourhood Food Week which took place in public parks, community centres, plazas and streets in our Vancouver community. I wanted to show nature and food related short films which would inspire people and be educational at the same time. Facing Fire not only gives a fresh perspective on forest fire history and prevention but also sheds a much needed Indigenous light on the colonial “war again fire”. The film explores innovative ways of relating to fire as a natural part of existence and spectators left feeling optimistic, challenged and invigorated. Everybody who watches this film comes away with a newfound sense of awe and discovery and immediately wants to tell every one they know about it! It’s life-changing.

This has not only been a course on a new topic, it taught me perseverance and turned my whole life around – new outlook on life, new country, new job, new steeper slope here in the Italian alps (I was worried about the little slope in the garden on the design site in the north of Sweden). I feel hopeful for the future, inspired and happy to have finished the studies, and I have learnt lots about permaculture – and most importantly it has inspired me to continue learning more. My instructor has been super supportive, very constructive, and shared many tips which I as a newbie did not think of, a wealth of knowledge which has been so appreciated. Thank you Javan.

As someone who has a degree in landscape architecture, I felt that the course exercises really refreshed and strengthened my ability to analyze a landscape to the degree where design questions were answered through the research and analysis process. I loved the sector compass exercise and found that really understanding how water was flowing across the site to be instrumental in determining the final concept plan. The course text was extremely helpful and I enjoyed how the readings gave more detail about each section and provided more specific information about certain crops/plants. The instructional videos with the augmented reality sandbox really helped me understand how to evaluate contours, define watersheds, and design for water flow. The instructors of the course did a great job providing feedback, answering questions, and acting as a point of contact for the class!