It’s here. The garden classes are in gardens, the cooking classes are in kitchens, the nature study is in forests, the raspberries taste like raspberries, and the snozzberries taste like snozzberries!

Photo Caption: My daughter and I inside the Hagood Mill cabin where I’ll be teaching sometimes.

I worked for weeks on the lesson plans for these hands-on classes, workshops, and tours and am so excited to finally roll them out. Click here for my entire 2015 schedule.

One of my favorite things about this year’s new classes is that some of them are going to be held inside of this adorable, late 1800s cabin at the Hagood Mill. The cabin will likely be too hot during the summer months, but when it is cool we’ll be traveling back in time as we do crafts on the porch or make food by the fire. When it is hot we’ll be indoors in the more modern facilities or outside in a shady spot by the creek.

Photo Caption: After your class, be sure to check out the old mill, ancient Native American petroglyphs, and other attractions. You can even pick up some on-site stone ground grits from the museum shop!

Don’t miss my first class this season, Permaculture Water Catchment for Backyards, on February 22nd. It’s a timely way to start the gardening season since we’ll actually be putting in a garden from scratch. Students will learn permaculture techniques for catching rainwater without purchasing any materials such as hugelkultur, swales, and vernal ponds. If you want to have a great spring garden this year then this class will set you up with the confidence to design and implement it. Plus, you’ll save a chunk of change and time on irrigation!

Photo Caption: This is the start to some hugelkultur (hill culture) beds that we did in our yard. Although piling soil on top of wood is simple in concept, it ends up having some nuances required for success that will be passed along in the permaculture water catchment class.

Most of the gardening classes for 2015 will be held at the creative rental space The Wheel in downtown’s Village of West Greenville. All the hands-on work done in these classes will result in a full-scale permaculture community garden for the village neighborhood and businesses.

Photo Caption: The cheapest way to store rainwater is in the ground, and that includes ponds and rain gardens.

Some of the garden classes this year have more focused topics than others, but all of them will deal with how to grow edible and ornamental plants successfully in the southeast. Additionally, all classes taught through Appalachian Feet Mountain Arts will follow permaculture principles and ethics. Beginners to permaculture may be interested in the thorough Building a Permaculture Garden Part 1 and Part 2 courses on March 14th.

Photo Caption: Harvests like this become the norm in a well-designed permaculture garden.

If what you need are classes on the details of a garden, there are plenty of topics to choose from. Support your plants and build shaded seating areas with Creating Garden Structures from Bamboo in March. Once you’ve built all your attractive bamboo arbors and trellises, April’s Growing a Small Space Intensive Food Garden will help you cover them.

Intensive space gardening is just the thing if you want to create authentic Old-Timey Kitchen Gardens like the one students will get to install at the Hagood Mill. We’ll be using permaculture techniques here, too — only we’ll learn how to hide these elements for the sake of aesthetics (and historical accuracy).

Photo Caption: With permaculture garden classes you’ll learn how to layer different sized species into the same area for maximum production and how to improve your soil so plants can be spaced closer together.

Once we’ve gardened all that yummy food into existence, we’ll need to know what to do with it. Instead of doing lectures at the Swamp Rabbit Cafe and Grocery (though there are still two available in March from last season’s schedule), we’ll be stepping into the upstairs kitchen and conjuring up yummy treats! Everything from experimenting with rare ingredients (think chanterelles and pawpaws) to beer brewing will be taught to curious cooks.

How about Wild Fermentation 101 where you’ll get to make probiotic foods like sauerkraut and crock pickles? There’s also not only one Cooking with Local Morels class (yes, with upstate SC morel mushrooms), but two Cooking with Local Morels classes! Different dishes will be cooked in each class.

Photo Caption: Instead of being lectured about various foods, we’re going to get right into the kitchen to make and taste them!

If you want to learn to fish instead of having it handed to you, how about the Learn to Forage for Wild Food class hike in Clemson? There’s no better way to learn what is safe to eat than to go with a pro and see what is in season.

Photo Caption: Where’s the best place to learn foraging? Outside in nature, of course!

Speaking of guided walks, we have a handful of guided tours scheduled at our urban farm this year. The first one is in April and the rest are scattered throughout the growing season. You’ll get to look at and taste test different things in the spring, summer, and fall.

These are the classes coming up soon, but we’ve barely scratched the surface. Make sure to check out the full schedule so you don’t miss anything.

As an FYI, we decided to remove the former cancellation policy for classes since it doesn’t appear that people abuse it often. If you need to cancel you’ll get a full refund, but please be considerate and let us know as soon as you find out you aren’t available so we can try to resell the spot.

Who else can’t wait for spring? Happy gardening, all!