Center for BioRegional Living
DESIGN • EDUCATION • CONSULTATION
Permaculture Hands-on Classes Ellenville NY
Center For Bioregional Living
SPRING - SUMMER 2026
Come and Learn how to capture, hold and store pure high quality rain water. A free gift in a place that gets 49 inches of rainfall a year! You can catch .6 gallons per inch of rainfall, for each square foot of roof area you connect to a tank.
Topics:
-
Calculate your water harvest
-
Install a rain tank system
-
Use Gravity for water pressure
-
Off grid sinks and showers
-
Connect your overflow or downspouts
-
Design a series of dynamic diverse, flowering rain gardens
-
Create havens of biodiversity and beauty fed by rain tanks!
Celebrate the abundant gift of rain water and solve water problems on your land with one action. Learn to create gravity fed rainwater supplied irrigation systems for gardens and livestock. You will learn how to connect a big rain tank to your house and how to properly plumb it to use for watering needs on your land and for fun!
Come on up to Ellenville for an immersion educational experience on our internationally revered permaculture campus.
We have thoughtfully crafted each of these offerings to extend your fundamental Permaculture design skills and advance them strongly, with these hands on trainings, taking you forward on the wings of true experience!
When you sign up for our classes you are invited to:
-
Use our biogas powered stoves,
-
Take gravity fed, rainwater supplied, wood fired, hot showers
-
Enjoy our straw bale cabin, outdoor classroom and our other natural buildings
-
Immerse yourself in our walking meditation, ten acre trail system
-
Listen to the silence, the wind and the amazing chorus of songbirds
-
Walk though our nut grove and gardens
-
Hang out with our goats and enjoy our Permaculture lifestyle in action.
Our Class Topics will be:
-
Forest Gardens, Orchards & Tree Crops - Saturday - April 25 - $300
-
Introduction To Permaculture & Biodynamic Gardening - Saturday May 9 - $300
-
Whole Site Permaculture Design - Two day classes - May 23 & 24 - $800
-
Natural Bioregional Building - Two day classes - Saturday June 6 & 7 - $1000
All the courses in this series function as stand alone teachings and they build off of each other when taken together. Come participate in the co-evolution of our Center for Bioregional Living while learning to live well with how our sacred Earth works. Everything that we will be working on here will be used and enjoyed by future visitors and students for many years to come.
Spaces are Limited - First come first serve - Reserve your space today
Forest Gardens, Orchards and Tree Crops
Saturday April 25 - $300
This course will teach you how to: successfully cultivate high value trees and the skills of gardening with nature through the well informed creation of edible, forest gardens ecologies, orchards and woodlots, topics and activities include:
-
Design and management of multi-functional tree plantings.
-
Planting and management of orchards & woodlots for selective harvesting fruits, nuts & berries, and for fuelwood and building materials.
-
Understory value-added crops like shitake, ginseng, goldenseal and wild garlic
-
Techniques for increasing the quality and productivity of wild edibles.
-
Hands-on activities: Planting Forest Garden Tree Crops!
Introduction to Permaculture & Biodynamic Gardening Saturday May 9 - $300
Come and join us at our one of a kind of Permaculture farm in Ellenville. The Center for Bioregional Living is an off grid market scale demonstration farm designed specifically, as our example to the regional food movement Offering opportunities and approaches for addressing our food needs with more of an integrated, ecological, permaculture approach. In this workshop we will have hands-on activities taking you from seed starting to bed prepping and planting a organic market scale garden.
-
Discuss preferred seed sources
-
Explain the Biodynamic Calendar & how we use it
-
Prep and plant beds in our garden
-
Explain our rain water catching system
-
Discuss permaculture in the fruit & vegetable garden layout
-
Explain when we use the tractor and when we use hand tools
-
Show you amendments that we use in our garden and why
You will get a chance to plant seed and prep beds and learn experientially about some key biodynamic and permaculture gardening insights and approaches to take home to your family and farm.
Whole Site Permaculture Design - Ecological Planning For Homesteads,
Farms & Communities - Two day classes - May 23 & 24 - $800
(Includes Organic Locally sourced Lunch and Supper)
This course will teach you how to apply Permaculture principles for sited design and to lay the groundwork for an entire land development projects; such as establishing socially just cooperative business enterprises, community farms, eco-villages, co-housing and homesteads.
Topics covered:
-
Reading the landscape, making use of Topography and hydrology, reading biological indicators.
-
Whole site analysis, mapping techniques,
-
Siting buildings and integrating the entire project through a solid phase plan.
-
Off Grid Energy and Water Systems
-
Natural Building
-
Agro-tourism & Events spaces
-
Agro-ecology and Agroforestry plantings
Hands-on activities: siting buildings and infrastructure, mapping, laying out and establishing earthworks and off grid and winterized infrastructure.
Bioregional Natural Buildings - Creating a Summer Kitchen
Two day classes - Saturday June 6 & 7 - $1000
(Organic Locally sourced Lunch, supper & breakfast included)
HealthyBuildings = Healthy People
Natural, local and bioregional buildings contribute to ecologically sound local economies and create beautiful, healthy homes and villages to live our lives in.
You will learn to apply the permaculture principles throughout the building process.
This hands-on workshop will teach you about creating buildings with trees cut from the land, maximizing on-site and local raw materials and framing with rough cut local lumber.
-
Passive solar design
-
Phased and integrated site development and building techniques.
-
Building structures and sacred sites with good feng shui and natural energy.
-
Insulating naturally, using rainwater for domestic needs and greywater for gardens.
(Organic Locally sourced Lunch, supper & breakfast included)
HealthyBuildings = Healthy People
Natural, local and bioregional buildings contribute to ecologically sound local economies and create beautiful, healthy homes and villages to live our lives in.
You will learn to apply the permaculture principles throughout the building process.
This hands-on workshop will teach you about creating buildings with trees cut from the land, maximizing on-site and local raw materials and framing with rough cut local lumber.
-
Passive solar design
-
Phased and integrated site development and building techniques.
-
Building structures and sacred sites with good feng shui and natural energy.
-
Insulating naturally, using rainwater for domestic needs and greywater for gardens.
We have thoughtfully crafted each of these offerings to function as stand alone teachings or to build off of each other when taken as the whole series.
Come participate in the evolution of The Center for Bioregional Living’s Educational campus where teach the essentials of living abundantly by following nature’s patterns.
When you complete this entire series you will know how to create a beautiful naturally built home and community, from the ground up, and how to set yourself up to be fully off the grid!
Most of our time will be spent outdoors and there will be plenty of hands-on work.
Home cooked and locally sourced meals included, for all 2 day classes, a basic breakfast is provided, on the morning of day 2, with organic locally roasted coffee and a diversity of teas available.
Camping is encouraged, in designated areas on our land or taking in the natural beauty of the region at a nearby Air BnB near one of the many stunning hiking areas (Lake Minnewaska State Park, Sam's Point, Peter's Kill, Mohonk House to name a few...).
Lodging options @ Center For Bioregional Living include limited indoor common area as well as tent space on our beautiful 14 acres. Bring tents, sleeping pads, sleeping bags. All the Classes will start at 10am Saturday
Bus from Port Authority to Ellenville where we can pick you up. Let us know if this is the best way for you to travel and we will save dinner for you! There is a Trailways Bus to New Paltz that we can, with arrangements, pick up at too.
Anyone driving who has extra space in their car let us know so that we may organize carpooling.
A Permaculture Oasis in Ellenville
Most people think of home as four walls and a roof. For Andrew Faust and Adriana Magana, that myopic view is the problem. Permaculture educators and consultants, the two have dedicated their livelihoods—and their 14-acre property—to modeling a more expansive concept of home. They founded and designed their Center for Bioregional Living in Warwarsing, which is part residence and part classroom, to unapologetically challenge how we think about shelter and what it means to live well.
Going over plans - Permaculture Training with Andrew Faust - Ellenville NY Steve Pagan Photography 2018
Going over plans - Permaculture Training with Andrew Faust - Ellenville NY Steve Pagan Photography 2018
Going over plans - Permaculture Training with Andrew Faust - Ellenville NY Steve Pagan Photography 2018
Going over plans - Permaculture Training with Andrew Faust - Ellenville NY Steve Pagan Photography 2018
Come on up to our Permaculture educational campus in Ellenville,NY!
Join us in the co-evolution of our Center for Bioregional Living where we teach the essentials of high quality ways of living well with how the earth works. Everything that we will be working on here will be used and enjoyed by future visitors and students for many years to come. Camping is encouraged on our land and taking in the sights at one of the many nearby gorgeous hiking areas (Lake Minnewaska, Sam's Point, Peter's Kill to name a few...)
Center for Bioregional Living is a seminal destination for permaculture education. Andrew Faust and Adriana Magaña have been applying permaculture design for more than 20 years and in 7 years they have graduated over 500 students in NYC. They have developed advanced permaculture design courses and workshops on there 14 acre property in Ellenville, New York They are turning their dreams into reality by developing hubs of permaculture design in New York, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx and the Tri-State area.
One of our main objectives is to offer an immersion learning environment for Permaculture design certification graduates. A place that is a Permaculture farm run, off grid growing market scale vegetables, nuts and berries using biodynamic and permaculture techniques. From using rain water gravity showers, cooking and eating from on site to drinking fresh springwater. With the help of our apprentices, advanced courses and volunteers we have created a beautiful rain catch humanure outhouse with urine separation, a gravity fed shower, a temporary kitchen which we will finish this fall and grew a bunch of food that we eat stored in our interim root cellar and sold to Saltie and Roebling Tea Room in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Extensive berry & orchard plantings, a chestnut coppicing woodlot and more. Natural building techniques and materials are displayed in all of the structures An extensive series of ponds add diversity, beauty and many growing opportunities such as chinampas and rice paddies. Highlights include a wide variety of fruit trees, medicinal herbs and berries planted close to their home making use of micro-climates, no-till and hugel culture garden beds, a pond plumbed for watering and their team of rotationally grazing chickens.