Online Landscape Design Courses

Andrew Millison has been studying, designing, building, and teaching about Permaculture systems since 1996 and is an instructor in the Department of Horticulture at Oregon State University. He instructs Advanced Permaculture Courses in Teaching, and has guest instructed for many Permaculture courses throughout the Western US. He worked for the State of Oregon creating a Permaculture conference and course for Oregon Housing and Community Services, an agency that builds low-income housing.

He works with gardeners, developers, university students, and community organizers to promote Permaculture. Andrew spent years running a design and build Permaculture landscape company, Millison Ecological Inc., where he completed large scale and high profile projects including rockstar Maynard Keenan’s Merkin Vineyard. To view more of his recent projects ranging from low-income senior housing developments to homesteads from 5-75 acres, as well as his demonstration sites in Corvallis, Oregon, visit

Marisha Auerbach has been actively practicing, studying, and teaching Permaculture in the Pacific Northwest for more than a decade, specializing in food production, seedsaving, ecology, and useful plants. She gained practical experience while living in both rural and urban locations. Currently, Marisha teaches at Portland Community College, Bastyr University, Pacific University and offers an online permaculture program through Oregon State University. She also works with a number of non-profit organizations including The City Repair Project, Aprovecho Education Center, Lost Valley Education Center, Fertile Ground Community Center and Planet Repair.

Marisha is committed to sharing her passions for food security, regenerative design, biological diversity, seedsaving, permaculture, ecology, cottage industry and positive futures. She has developed several permaculture-based businesses including a plant nursery, providing edible flowers and other gourmet specialty food items to restaurants, plantable greeting cards and herbal medicines. Marisha has offered permaculture work from the forests of Vietnam to the Rocky Mountains of the United States to the stressed conditions of Haiti. She holds advanced permaculture certificates in Permaculture Aid Work and Keyline Planning.

Marisha graduated from the Evergreen State College in 1998 where she focused on ethnobotany, ecological agriculture and sustainability studies. She currently resides in Portland, OR. Marisha can be found online at www.herbnwisdom.com.

Based in Reno, NV, Neil Bertrando manages a 1.3 acre homestead with his wife Katie and the help of many in the community. His passion is enriching bioregions by building community and broadening the local genetic resources of practical plants and animals to relocalize resource supply networks. He strives for collaboration in his work and runs RT Permaculture, a Permaculture consulting, design, and education business. In his teaching and design he applies Keyline Design, Permaculture and Holistic Management as interconnected systems approaches to managing the complexities of ecosystems.

While he lives in a temperate arid climate, over the past 12 years, he has gained experience working in wide range of climate and cultural contexts such as Hawaii, Haiti, Minnesota, Maine, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, and California. He has an MS in Environmental Science from University of Nevada, Reno, where his research focused on effects of the urban corridor on stream health and regional nutrient cycling. In design and development he has worked properties from 1/10th of an acre to 100+ acres. His experience has oscillated between academic research, environmental monitoring and planning surveys, stream restoration, farm management, and local community building.

Because we all stand on the shoulders of giants, he wants to acknowledge his many teachers and mentors including Craig Sponholtz, Geoff Lawton, Darren Doherty, Erik Ohlsen, Owen Hablutzel, Dan Halsey, Andrew Millison, Robyn Francis, Dr. Sherm Swanson, Tom Stille, Dr. Jerry Qualls, Dr. Glenn Miller, and many others. Thank you.

Javan K. Bernakevitch lives permaculture. Consulting, designing and installing urban yards, rural homesteads, farms and international aid projects, he helps folks get clear on their lives, explore niches, build businesses and create thriving landscapes. Trained by pioneers and leaders in Permaculture, Keyline Design, Holistic Management, group facilitation and the Soil Food Web, Javan works around the planet while savoring his native biome in western Canada.

Tao Orion is a Permaculture designer, teacher, homesteader, and mother living in the southern Willamette Valley of Oregon. She teaches Permaculture design throughout the Northwest and at Aprovecho, a 40 acre non-profit sustainable living educational organization. Tao consults on holistic farm, forest, and restoration planning through Resilience Permaculture Design, LLC. She holds a degree in Agroecology and Sustainable Agriculture from UC Santa Cruz, and has a keen interest in integrating the disciplines of organic agriculture, sustainable land use planning, ethnobotany, and ecosystem restoration in order to create beneficial social, economic, and ecological outcomes. She is the author of a forthcoming book from Chelsea Green Publishing about rethinking the concept of invasive species management and restoration from a Permaculture-based perspective. When she is not writing, she is busy keeping up with her toddler and wrangling a diverse array of plants and animals on her 6.5 acre homestead, Viriditas Farm.