Permaculture Design Certificate Course — Sahainan

The Permaculture Design Certificate Course at Sahainan is the full, internationally recognised 72-hour PDC curriculum, based on Bill Mollison’s Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual and woven together with David Holmgren’s twelve principles. What sets it apart is where it happens. Rather than a classroom, the course runs in the open air of Sahainan Permaculture Organic Farm in Thung Chang, Nan, in the far north of Thailand, where almost every lesson is growing, composting or being built somewhere around you. The fourteen-day residential format gives the standard curriculum room to breathe, so mornings of theory lead into hands-on afternoons and the ideas are tested against a real, working landscape the same day they are taught. Two runs are offered in the second half of 2026, from 1 to 14 September and from 26 October to 8 November, each running daily from early morning until the late afternoon.

The teacher is Sandot Sukkaew, the founder of Sahainan, working with experienced farmers who have delivered well over a hundred courses between them. The curriculum covers the full arc of permaculture design, from reading climate, water and soil through to zoning, food forests, natural building and the social and economic patterns that keep a project alive. It is rounded out with extra workshops that reflect the farm’s self-reliant way of life, including food preservation, medicinal herbs and basic survival skills, so participants leave with practical homestead knowledge as well as design theory. Sahainan’s own philosophy runs through all of it. The farm is built around self-reliance, simple living and the idea that one of the truest forms of wealth is the ability to create your own resources rather than consume them, and students see that principle demonstrated in the gardens, the kitchen and the buildings they help work on.

Living on the farm for the full two weeks is central to how the course teaches. Days run from morning theory into practical afternoons, and evenings wind down around the fire under the Nan sky, with the forested hills and slow rhythm of the north giving the course a grounded, unhurried character. Meals come from the gardens, accommodation is simple, and the community of participants and farmers eats and works together, so you experience the design you are learning rather than only studying it. For many people this immersion is what makes the ideas stick, because a food forest or a greywater system is no longer a diagram but something they have stood in, planted or dug.

The fee is 16,600 baht and includes simple farm accommodation and three meals a day for the duration of the course, with a deposit of 6,000 baht securing a place. For those who cannot commit to the full fourteen days, partial attendance is possible at 1,200 baht per day, though only participants who complete the whole course receive the certificate. That certificate is, in Sahainan’s words, the recognised prerequisite for sharing permaculture and for using the word permaculture in any business activity, which makes the course a genuine first step for anyone who wants to go on to teach, design or consult. Because the 72-hour curriculum is shared by PDC courses worldwide, graduates also join an international network of designers who work from the same foundation and language, which is part of what gives the certificate value well beyond Thailand. To book, send your full name, home address and a short note on your motivation to [email protected], or call +66 95 350 8145 or +66 95 761 2702. Deposits are paid by bank transfer and are non-refundable if a participant cancels, but are refunded in full if Sahainan cancels the course.