Learn practical skills and how to live sustainably by attending these half-day or full-day workshops, usually on Saturdays. Workshop topics range from bee-keeping to making cheese to basket weaving to growing vegetables seasonally.
Spaces fill up fast for these popular, informative and fun workshops. Please book early to avoid disappointment.
For all our upcoming workshops summary and bookings CLICK HERE.
For information about the Permaculture Design Course CLICK HERE.
PLEASE NOTE: For your security workshop bookings are done through Eventbrite so please beware of individual sellers.
Contact us E: info@nscf.org.au if you have a gift voucher to redeem.
Current workshops
- Introduction to Permaculture with Michael Wardle – 1 & 2 April 2023
- Fermaculture with Samantha Somers – 15 April 2023
- Slow Clothing as Antidote to Fast Fashion with Jane Milburn – 20 May 2023
- The Permaculture Potager with Michael Wardle – 20 May 2023
- Outdoor Education and the Curriculum with Emma Brindal – 27 May 2023
- Soils for the Home Gardener with Jenny Kato – 17 June 2023
- Ecological Despair and Empowerment with Emma Brindal and Em Maltby – 17 June 2023
- The Body Language of Trees with Sitara Gare – 24 June 2023
- Successful School Gardening with Emma Brindal and Jenny Kato – 5 August 2023
- Permaculture Design Course – 5 August for 16 Saturdays
- Introduction to Soil and Soil Conditioning with Col Johnson, Earthlife – 12 August 2023
- Introduction to Nutrition and Fertilising with Col Johnson, Earthlife – 12 August 2023
1 & 2 April 2023, 9 am – 4 pm
Introduction to Permaculture with Michael Wardle
Join us for two days to learn the basics of permaculture design. This course tackles how to grow food, build houses and create communities, and minimize environmental impact at the same time. Its principles are being constantly developed and refined by people throughout the world.
The course aims to inspire and empower you to use permaculture design in your everyday life. You will learn the history, various definitions, design process, ethics, principles, other design tools and case studies from a range of applications.
This course will cover:
- What is Permaculture?
- Permaculture Ethics and Design Principles
- Soil Basics
- Composting for beginners
- Food Production (forest gardens and garden farming)
- Basic Design Framework
- Integrated Animal Systems
- Social Permaculture
$260/$230 Healthcare Card Holder plus Eventbrite booking fee
Bookings here
15 April 2023, 9 am – 12 pm
Fermaculture with Samantha Somers
Fermentation of foods is a traditional method of food preservation which uses beneficial bacteria to preserve vegetables, fruits and basic kitchen ingredients and prevent waste.
This 3-hour workshop will cover the basics for how to ferment foods to make Kimchi, Sauerkraut, Kefir, Miso, Kvass and more, presented by Naturopath, Nutritionist, Herbalist and Permaculture educator Samantha Somers of Somers Naturopath. Using simple recipes which can restore your health, are low cost, low carbon, Zone 0 Permaculture practices that can localise food and improve your access to affordable integrative medicine techniques.
Discover the therapeutic benefits of Prebiotics in food which facilitate the growth and diversity of your own good bacteria for healthy digestion and good gut health, improve quality sleep, create a strong immune system and to assist in maintaining a healthy weight.
$75/$60 Healthcare Card Holder plus Eventbrite booking fee
Bookings here
20 May 2023, 9 am – 4pm
Slow Clothing as Antidote to Fast Fashion with Jane Milburn
A profound rethink of fashion is required in the face of the climate crisis. Being more engaged with the clothes in our wardrobe is a way to drive systemic change as well as bringing with it financial, ecological health and wellbeing benefits. Rather than passively choosing from the latest shelf-ready fast fashion offerings, we can regenerate our agency when we are empowered through skills, knowledge and desire to assemble a wardrobe of garments that we want to wear and know how to keep in service for as long as possible. During her recent Churchill Fellowship research, Jane Milburn met many people reclaiming their agency through acts of styling, mending, making, co-designing, redesigning and upcycling to appreciate and value the natural resources that go into our garments.
More information here.
$120/$102 Healthcare Card Holder plus Eventbrite booking fee
Bookings here
20 May 2023, 9 am – 4 pm
The Permaculture Potager with Michael Wardle
Come spend the day with Michael Wardle, our Adult Education Coordinator, as we look at and explore the Permaculture Potager.
A vegetable garden in France is named a potager which comes from potage, which is vegetable soup. The vegetable patch has often been a part of the garden separated from the rest and treated like a small farm field— ploughed (or rototilled), planted for the season in rows, and then left fallow.
The potager is, first of all, a permanent garden— decorative, cultivated by hand methods, integrating shrubs, trees, paths, and herbs, vegetables, and flowers.These types of gardens, though they are often considered a new development, have in fact been the typical type of garden in France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, North Africa, Persia, and many other places for a very long time—the Middle Ages in Europe, and as much as four thousand years in Persia and North Africa.
In this workshop, we will explore the mysteries of the potager garden. Plants were grown for many purposes—flowers, vegetables, herbs, privacy, etc. We’ll discuss the intensive soil preparation for close planting and continuous cropping, and the growth and care of fruits and vegetables, decorative design—some call it edible landscaping and production for much or all of the year.
$120/$102 Healthcare Card Holder plus Eventbrite booking fee
Bookings here
27 May 2023, 9:00 am to 4:00pm pm
Outdoor Learning and the Curriculum: A Professional Development Workshop for Teachers
This practical workshop demonstrates how the Australian Curriculum cross-curriculum priority area of Sustainability can be addressed while taking learning outdoors. The content draws on place-responsive pedagogies and nature connection practices which connect students to place and foster a care of the natural world.
Read more here.
$160/$110 Healthcare Card Holder plus Eventbrite booking fee.
Bookings here
17 June 2023, 9 am – 4 pm
Soils for the Home Gardener with Jenny Kato
$120/$102 Healthcare Card Holder plus Eventbrite booking fee
Bookings here
17 June 2023, 9 am – 4 pm
Ecological Despair and Empowerment with Emma Brindal and Em Maltby
The Work that Reconnects (WtR), which is a supportive framework to reawaken our connection to ourselves, each other and the world. It was developed by deep ecologist, activist and scholar, Joanna Macy, as a way to understand people’s feelings and empower them in the age of nuclear proliferation in the late 1970s. In recent years, WtR has become increasingly relevant to other contemporary issues such as climate change crisis, loss of biodiversity, pollution and other environmental and social crises.
For more information click here.
$120/$102 Healthcare Card Holder plus Eventbrite booking fee
Bookings here
24 June 2023, 9:00 am to 12:00pm pm
The Body Language of Trees with Sitara Gare
To read the body language of a tree is to open ourselves to another world of knowledge and being.
We share 20% of our DNA with trees and live beside trees in our backyards, streets, parks, and surrounding environment yet we know so little about them. Trees speak to us without words, it is through their body language they tell us their stories, of how they are thriving or just surviving. In this time of environmental crisis where we are continuing to log, clear and remove trees in our ancient and urban forests there is no better time than now to learn more about trees.
This interactive and participatory workshop is based on arboriculture principles, it will provide participants with an understanding of how trees grow, what impacts tree health and how to read the body language of a tree. It will include some botany, minimal Latin, a tree pun or two and an opportunity to share your love of trees with other tree loving folk.
$75/$60 Healthcare Card Holder plus Eventbrite booking fee.
Bookings here
5 August 2023, 9:00 am to 4:00pm pm
Successful School Gardening
This workshop will introduce the practicalities of establishing and maintaining a school garden using permaculture practices and principles. It will also cover ways in which the Australian Curriculum cross-curriculum priority area of Sustainability can be addressed, and be applied to Learning Areas including Science, English, Humanities and Social Sciences and the Arts.
It is for teachers and school community members who are wanting to establish new gardens, or who already have gardens that you are wanting to rejuvenate. These strategies can be applied for any budget that the school has for a garden.
Read more here.
$160/$110 Healthcare Card Holder plus Eventbrite booking fee.
Bookings here
5 August to 18 November 2023, 8:30 am – 4:30pm pm
Permaculture Design Course
This unique course, delivered over 16 weeks in Brisbane, gives you the knowledge and skills to observe and design from natural patterns to create productive gardens & properties. You will learn how to grow your own food, apply appropriate technologies, use resources wisely, build on living systems and rebuild communities.
Learn to:
- Build Resilience through Connectivity
- Facilitate Regeneration of the Earth
- Create Abundance through Design
The Permaculture Design Course (PDC) builds from its foundation in ethics and design principles to develop strategies giving you the techniques and tools to inspire critical thinking.
Our skilled educators will give you the attention you need with more time for questions and conversations. We will dive deep into our subjects and have time to discuss your personal projects.
More information here.
$1600/$1300 Healthcare Card Holder plus Eventbrite booking fee.
Earlybird: $1450/$1100 Healthcare Card Holder plus Eventbrite booking fee.
Bookings here
12 August 2023, 9 am – 12 pm
Introduction to Soil and Soil Conditioning with Col Johnson, Earthlife
Attendees will be given the fundamentals of soil and how natural systems work, as well as an understanding of why conventional systems break down and affect the soil ecosystem.
Attendees will learn about:
Soil types
Structure
Compaction and root systems
Moisture
Crusting
Soil biology
Organic Matter
Compost/Humus
Common additives
pH
$75/$60 Healthcare Card Holder plus Eventbrite booking fee
Bookings here
12 August 2023, 1 pm – 4 pm
Introduction to Nutrition and Fertilising with Col Johnson, Earthlife
Attendees will be given the fundamentals of soil and plant nutrition and how natural nutrient cycles work. As well as an understanding of why conventional systems break down and affect the nutrient cycling.
Attendees will learn about:
Fertiliser history
Essential elements pros and cons
Trace and non-essential elements
Basics of natural nutrient cycling
Organic fertilising
Foliar fertilising
Insects and Disease
Microbial relationships
Minerals and mineral nutrition
$75/$60 Healthcare Card Holder plus Eventbrite booking fee
Bookings here
Workshop cancellations
We understand that sometimes circumstances change and participants may not be able to attend a course or workshop that has been paid for.
For workshops (half day, full day and weekend), we require a minimum of 7 days notice for cancellations. We do not provide refunds for any cancellations that are made within 7 days of a workshop. If participants cancel participation in a workshop and are entitled to a refund, they can choose to:
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- Receive a refund
- Opt for a credit for another workshop, to be used within 12 months of the initial workshop.
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Cancellations of workshops by Northey Street City Farm
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- Northey Street City Farm may cancel or change a class at any time, for reasons including but not limited to, lack of participation, inclement weather or facilitator availability.
- Registrants can opt for a full refund, or can use the credit for a future workshop, to be used within 12 months of the date of the initial workshop or course.
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