Portland Permaculture Institute

A PDX-based certifying body for the Internationally-recognized PDC

Originally founded by Pam and Joe Leitch in 2004, Toby Hemenway used the Portland Permaculture Institute name to issue certificates through his college-credit courses at Portland State University in the mid-2000's. Matt Bibeau, founder of PDX Permaculture LLC, received his PDC from Toby though this course in 2006, and coordinated Toby's Portland-area courses from 2009-2011, completing his student teaching with Toby as well as with Marisha Auerbach, formerly the instructor of Portland Community College's PDC.

Matt ran PDC courses from 2011-2021 through the Planet Repair Institute and the City Repair Project, as well as Teacher Trainings for Youth Educators from 2010-2019 through the Institute of Permaculture Education for Children. In 2022, Matt resigned from The City Repair Project and was hired as a faculty to teach Portland Community College's PDC. This course had used the Cascadia Permaculture Institute as its accrediting affiliation, but this affiliation was with Marisha, not with PCC, so the course was in need of a new affiliation that could trace the course back to its instructor.

After years of inactivity, the Portland (PDX) Permaculture Institute name was revived by Matt to credential this course as being offered by an experienced and recognized instructor. The vision of the PDX Permaculture Institute is to not only contribute to assuring the integrity of the PDC experience and certificate, but also to provide course graduates with a place to offer information about their work in the world so that others can connect to permaculture-trained professionals in their varied fields of expertise. This feature will soon be added.