“THOUGH THE PROBLEMS OF THE WORLD ARE INCREASINGLY MORE COMPLEX, THE SOLUTIONS REMAIN EMBARRASSINGLY SIMPLE....”
- Bill Mollison, co-founder of the world-wide permaculture movement

Located near Santa Fe, New Mexico, the Permaculture Institute was founded in 1997 as the sister organization to the Permaculture Institute of Australia. It came on the footsteps of the Permaculture Drylands Institute, formerly the leading permaculture educational institution in the US. Our mission is to promote sustainable living skills through education, networking and demonstration projects. We facilitate networking among permaculture groups and projects in NM/Southwestern region and beyond.

There was concern on the part of founders Bill Mollison and Scott Pittman that over time permaculture maintain its integrity as the primary educator and promoter of sustainable design. There has been pressure over the years to change the curriculum and pedagogy of the Permaculture Design Course to attract more mainstream participants with a less rigorous offering; both of the Permaculture Institutes have resisted such a dilution of purpose.

Today, we focus on offering on-going Permaculture Design Certificate Courses based on the original material developed by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren. In addition we branch out in other important sustainable living skills, such as Topbar Beekeeping, orchard management, water harvesting, watershed restoration and natural building.  Our goal is to offer comprehensive programs in each one of these topics, leading to meaningful livelihood and mastery of the subject by our students.

As our understanding of needs and solutions grows, the organizational structure and approaches change. At the moment, we work with a stellar Teaching Team - a group of sustainability practitioners and visioneers who offer education, design and consulting services for various projects.

Our programs draw people from around the world, and from the surrounding communities alike, offering positive alternatives and solutions to the challenges of our time. We just begun our work on collecting photographs and links to projects initiated by our former students.

Our Drylands Permaculture page showcases the best articles from the former Permaculture Drylands Journals, focused on sustainable living in drylands. This website is also used for networking the various permaculture groups, guilds and projects around New Mexico.

The institute’s administrative office is located at the house of Scott and Arina Pittman, in the traditional village of Jacona (midway between Santa Fe, Los Alamos and Espanola). For about 9 years we have been working on slowly turning our land and home into a permaculture showcase. See what we have accomplished at home so far.