17-Day Permaculture Design Certificate Course — Gaia Ashram

Gaia Ashram’s residential Permaculture Design Certificate Course delivers the full, internationally recognised 72-hour PDC curriculum over a seventeen-day programme at a working ecovillage in Ban That, Phen District, Udon Thani, in the northeast of Thailand. The extended length is a deliberate choice. Where many courses compress the curriculum into twelve or fourteen days, Gaia stretches it to seventeen because they believe knowledge has to be experienced to take hold, so there is real time for learning through doing rather than sitting with theory alone. Two runs are offered, from 12 to 30 October 2026 and from 8 to 26 March 2027, and participants live on the land for the whole course as part of a small international community.

What makes the course distinctive is the way it braids three complementary traditions together. The permaculture design curriculum sits alongside deep ecology and the ecovillage design principles that Gaia has practised since it was founded in 2012, and the three reinforce one another throughout the programme. Sessions on Deep Ecology and The Work That Reconnects help participants cultivate a deeper relationship with the earth and with life as a whole, which gives the course a reflective quality that a purely technical PDC can lack. The curriculum itself is comprehensive, covering permaculture ethics and principles, design methods, climate, water and soil, food forests and agroforestry, gardening, animal systems and aquaculture, natural building, appropriate technology, urban strategies and community living, and it finishes with a design project and a certification ceremony. The everyday life of the ashram then shows those ideas in practice, because students are not visiting a classroom but joining a functioning ecovillage where the principles are already at work.

The days follow a balanced rhythm. There is optional early meditation or yoga, alternating theory and practical sessions through the morning and afternoon, movement practices such as yoga, dance or tai chi, and home-cooked vegetarian and vegan meals that participants take turns helping to prepare. That shared cooking and eating is part of the design, building the sense of community that ecovillage living depends on. The setting gives the learning its character. Gaia Ashram was founded by Om Sunisa Jamwiset Deiters and her partner Tom Deiters and occupies several regenerating hectares that the community has restored through agroforestry, organic farming and permaculture design. Natural building is everywhere you look, from the sculptural cob-and-timber Gaia Sala that anchors the site to the handmade Fairy House and the Gaia Cafe, so participants live and study inside real examples of the techniques the course teaches. Through its Gaia School Asia education arm the community also extends this work beyond its own boundary, collaborating with the local village and building an eco-kindergarten from natural materials for the children nearby, so students see permaculture and natural building serving a real community rather than a single site.

The course is led by an experienced team. Ben Murray brings twenty-five years in horticulture and close to a decade teaching permaculture, organic gardening and natural building across several continents, and co-founder Om divides her time between facilitation and stewarding the land. The fee is 35,500 baht and covers dormitory accommodation or camping, three vegetarian or vegan meals a day, course materials and digital handbooks, an exposure trip to nearby projects, activities and all teaching. Five early-bird places are offered at 31,950 baht to those who register at least three months ahead, and a 5,000 baht deposit secures a place. The course suits people who want to start or deepen their own permaculture project and who value the reflective, community-centred approach as much as the technical training. Registration is through Gaia Ashram’s official form, and the team sends arrival and payment details once a booking is made.