2025 Year in Review

As we settle in to the winter months ahead, we have a chance to catch our breath and reflect on the last few seasons of labor and harvest, take inventory, and express gratitude.

EDUCATION

• This year saw the 370th Permaculture Design graduate in our history of 15+ years teaching in Cincy

• Welcomed our second BIPOC teacher at the Antioch College course

• Hosted sessions with OLLI Continuing Ed at UC, Kenton, Ky Library, Mt Healthy Pawpaw Club

• Gave 2 full and 2 partial scholarships for the Permaculture Design Certification course

• Led and partnered on seed swaps, implementations, tree pruning, Winter Practices, Plant and Play day, Earth Day events, Monarch Festival, Farmers Markets

GROWING VALUE NURSERY

• We continue to increase local sourcing and in-house cultivation of our inventory 

• Sold 1,400+ plants!

• Another record year for new Memberships. THANK YOU, NEIGHBORS! 

• Continue to increase open hours during key months of Spring and Fall

• Installed dozens of new bilingual signage in Nursery and demonstration spaces

• Grant funding allowed thousands of dollars in discounted prices

• CPI conducted Permaculture Nursery Management virtual workshop for Permaculture Institute of North America (PINA)

COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS

• CPI co-presented with other activist growers at Green Umbrella Midwest Regional Sustainability Summit 

• Design collaborations with Food Not Lawns

• Saved a Neighbor thousands of dollars with a design for their 30 acre space in North Fairmount.

• Through grant funding from Seeds of Change and Community Partnerships we leveraged our skills and efforts to install more than 30 Food Forests and Forage Gardens. Sites include residences, public spaces, community centers, businesses, schools and churches. Looking forward to reporting the hundreds of pounds of produce yielded in the coming years.

• To grow a more connected, interdependent community we continue to partner with many organizations and individuals. This year we’ve collaborated on projects, workshops, and events with: TreeYo Permaculture, Working in Neighborhoods, Reimagining the Civic Commons, Cincinnati Urban Promise, Bethel Apostalic Church #2, Westwood Grows, Tending Roots EcoCollaborative, Green Umbrella, Common Orchard Project, Food Not Lawns, Main St EcoGarden/Permaganic, Antioch College, Dater Montessori School, Rotary Club, Cincinnati State, Wake the Farm Up, Sustainability Central, Hamilton County Parks and Conservation Districts

• Engagement with GLRPI and PINA for training and idea sharing to improve our offerings. 

Thank you to our entire ecosystem of support

Permaculture is about connections, and it is through the connected ecosystem of support that we are able to do what we do. We have exciting things in the works for 2026 and invite you to Think Global, Live Local with us as we continue to evolve.

~ Susan VonderHaar, Executive Director, & the CPI Board

Howard Zuefle: Nurseryman, Yogi, Linchpin

Since coming to serve as Nursery Manager at Growing Value Nursery, Howard “Howie” Zuefle has proved himself to be invaluable to Cincinnati Permaculture Institute on so many levels: teacher, nursery manager, advisor, designer, installer, consultant, guide, friend. He wears these hats as easily as he wears his winning smile. He says he owes it all to his basic desire to eat well. Wild forage of food and organic growing of food are among his many passions and pathways to that end. 

His knowledge and experience, combined with his community network in East Price Hill, and other Cincinnati neighborhoods, made him the likely force with both the “Seeds of Change” and the “Boots on the Ground” programs, funded by grants we received in 2024-25. He rather single-handedly consulted, designed, selected, instructed, and installed alongside more than a dozen of our 27 Food Champions at their sites.

All while he was creating and managing the perennial edible nursery stock at CPIs Growing Value Nursery. He takes skillful care of our plants, the high quality of which continues to be praised by GVN customers.

More on Howard Zuefle in his own words:

Howard has been on his journey to find a way of living that integrates our human role in our local ecology for a good while now.  For him it took a car accident to motivate him to look beyond the quick fixes mainstream culture throws at us.  

The journey started in studying neuroscience and psychology at University of Cincinnati.  Then a clear need to be outside took the steering wheel, which brought an internship at the Civic Garden Center, a Permaculture Design Course with CPI, Foraging Mentors, Farming Mentors, and the rich Earth centered community of Cincinnati into his life.  

That was all on the going towards the connection with nature outside of himself part; there was also a coming into his own nature side of the journey by integrating the experience, which has involved embodiment practices, somatic experiencing, yoga, grounding/earthing, and learning to stay with the uncomfortable parts of living.

Finding local food, water, and the community that it takes to allow those to happen has been another major variable on the journey.  When one finds real food and the nourishing feeling that accompanies it there is no going back.

Howard is always looking to do Permaculture consultations, Botanical surveys, Nature Education, lead Foraging excursions and support others on their journey to a harmonious way of living. You can email him at HowGround@proton.me.

Calling All Permaculture Designers: Help Us Relieve a Design Bottleneck

In 2025, Cincinnati Permaculture Institute was introduced to and began a friendly partnership with another local organization with a complementary mission to our own: Food Not Lawns, a mutual aid group with a permaculture foundation. Both organizations envision a more resilient future in which food consumers become food producers, and grow food (and other essential lifestyle staples) in a way that is beneficial for the Earth we all rely on. A better, more sustainable way of life that we believe is entirely possible and within our power to create.

The good news: there is a growing awareness of and demand for sustainable, edible landscaping & environmental design in and around Cincinnati, and between our two organizations (and other mutual partners), we have a potentially huge community of willing hands and hearts who could be planting food forests all over the city and surrounding counties.

The issue? We have a bottleneck.

Lots of sites to design for, lots of volunteers ready to implement and maintain, but for the time being, only a handful of trained permaculturists currently engaged in the work to get us from Idea to Execution. It’s preventing us from taking on more than a project or two at a time and building momentum.

That’s where you come in… we hope!

CPI has graduated more than 350 permaculture designers in the last 15+ years, and we just know that the skills to solve this bottleneck are out there, right in our backyard. Skills like:

• Creating basemaps and using design software

• Assessing the water, sun, slope, soil, and other key landscape features to inform design

• Plant selection and companion/guild planting for a food forest or edible garden

• Planning phases of implementation

Think small scale residential yard upgrade, not whole-site comprehensive design or large undeveloped sites, and you’ll have a sense of the scope of work.

What’s that…you don’t think you can do it? You’re not experienced enough? Not a pro? Out of practice?

Well, there’s no cure for Impostor Syndrome like proof, and projects like these are a great way to gain experience and put a few more designs under your belt until that “I can’t…” voice in your head is replaced with “I did!” Whether you’re a recent PDC graduate or it’s been a few seasons since your class design project, you’re qualified to do this!

Our teacher Felix Marisa has been laying the groundwork for collaboration between CPI and Food Not Lawns, using a “design jam” model for collaborative design that anyone can replicate, and would be available to help coach and facilitate any designers wanting to get involved.

If you are interested, please use the form below to contact Felix by email:

Food Champions of Cincinnati: Mary Dudley

In 2024, CPI received a generous grant award from the City of Cincinnati's Boots on the Ground program and set about growing and nurturing ten “Food Champions" around the west side of the city. This year, we are inviting our Food Champs to share their stories. In this article we’d like to introduce you to Mary Dudley.

Mary is a pivotal person in the CPI Food Champions stories. Her tireless efforts weaving community through gardening has brought more connections than we can count. She tells her own story below…

Mary on the back porch of her Westwood home near Mt Airy Forest

I am a seeds & soil kinda gal.

I find my fondest moments are those when I am filled to the brim with excitement as I prepare soil for a new garden bed, stirring the black compost with soft brown peat. Since my daily schedule is unpredictable, the time to fill and seed these freshly churned beds occasionally falls under a shining moon and I go to bed soil streaked and hoping for a gentle rain to awaken the sleeping seeds. Once the seeds germinate and put on new growth, I nurture them with trellising structures compiled from unused items pieced together with love and twine. My passion is for the resilience of the plants who boldly root themselves and make life blossom in the face of rain, wind, drought and heat, fending off pressures from herbivores along the way. I love sharing my plant fascination with others and working together to protect the fertile spaces of our community for many generations to come. 

My current volunteer work through the nonprofit Westwood Grows (started in 2022 in an effort to support public gardens in the Westwood neighborhood of Cincinnati) focuses on celebrating neighbors who plant native gardens, cultivating community through seed and plant swaps, and empowering those who sustain existing food forest installations in the community with tools and education.

While a bountiful harvest of fresh produce is desired, the real value lies in the daily interactions I have with neighbors turned friends in the form of compost conversations, texts with fuzzy pictures and questions of identification, smiles shared from snacking in the garden, and friendly honks from drivers who wave their gratitude as we pull up weeds along the road. It is through these relationships I am the most nourished. 

To learn more about Westwood Grows and meet the team, visit our website: www.westwoodgrows.org and check out our upcoming events including plant swaps at the Westwood Farmers Market and the Westwood Native Garden Walking Tour hosted in collaboration with Seeding Community.

Growing together,

Mary Dudley, she/her
Botanist, Educator, Nurturer
Website / YouTube / LinkedIn

Implementation Follow-Up: Nora & David, 2024

In 2024, CPI selected one of the final designs from the year’s permaculture design course as a candidate for implementation. That site belonged to then-students, now-grads Nora & David of Florence, KY. This spring, we asked for an update on their site and anything they have learned.

What they shared was that they were faced with unexpected setbacks, in the forms of life-changing losses and health events, that changed the trajectory of their permaculture dreams. Though time spent in the garden was limited, there were still lessons learned, which Nora shared with us by email in March:

“Things have settled down a little since this January and we've been able to assess the needs of our plantings. Most of everything survived and all sorts of valuable lessons learned which, for the sake of brevity, I will list:

• Accepting our limitations... circumstances and physical challenges caused us to re-evaluate what we could actually do.

• Adjust and overcome: move EVERYTHING closer to the house and a water source. Incorporating edible bushes and plants into my already existing flower beds.  (There was a mental block all these years in my head from doing this. hahaha. BUT, I'm not alone in thinking this way.)

• Water access is a BIG DEAL. 

• Having just one hose to reach everywhere was a little challenging.

• I put several barrels around our back shed and was quite impressed with how much water was able to be collected! But... in the dead of summer, a 55 gallon barrel was only enough for 1 bed!

• Wood chips and deep mulch REALLY helped.  I'm convinced that this is what kept most of our plants alive when we couldn't get around to watering.

• The raised beds that we installed around some old locust trees created a problem.  We underestimated how even mostly dead locust stumps would send up all sorts of thorny little branches!!!!!  I have begun to move plants from the raised beds to other locations, pulling back soil and cut off those branches.  I plan on burning the stumps to avoid using chemicals to kill them. Once I can be certain that this has fixed the problem, I will probably reinstall raised beds, but use something like metal raised beds.

• Deer pressure was unrelenting... even in the suburbs.  I used netting around several bushes and trees and they still somehow were able to reach through and nip some down!  Taking extra steps to protect everything including Irish spring soap and "Scram" (blood meal).

• Making low cost fertilizer without the typical manures. This has become something I've given a lot of thought to.  I don't trust buying manure from unknown sources due to what cows and horses are eating these days (Graze-On herbicide can be ingested by these animals and pass right through to their manure!).  I'm also not allowed to keep chickens in Florence. While I do purchase some organic fertilizers, this can get expensive.  So, I've focused on comfrey tea as well as fermenting other plant material (inspired by JADAM - a low-cost sustainable organic farming method that originated in Korea).  I've also started growing cover crops like clover and daikon radish.

“I am so grateful to CPI and all those who came out to help,” Nora adds - and we’re thankful to her for sharing her lessons learned this first year post-implementation.

To keep up with our ongoing implementation days, see the full schedule here.

Food Champions of Cincinnati: Nate Hale

In 2024, CPI received a generous grant award from the City of Cincinnati's Boots on the Ground program and set about growing “Food Champions" around the west side of the city. By working with leadership already present in these neighborhoods, we were able to assist in launching ten inspiring projects, each one unique to the group of individuals who conceived and orchestrated it. These folks brought their vision, goals, friends, volunteers and hard work, and CPI helped guide and finance to establish significant food production. This year, we are inviting our Food Champs to share their stories.

Nate Hale, in his own words…

I want to thank the folks at CPI so much for the support over the past year. The fruit-producing trees and shrubs you provided were of exceptional quality, and the planting event, where we added over 20 trees to our growing orchard, was truly inspiring. 

My family and I have immense gratitude for the opportunity to live on and steward this land. We've been transitioning large parts of it from a landscape dominated by a few opportunistic species to a more diverse and balanced ecosystem and incorporating food producing plants. 

Our hope is that this space will continue to become a place for sharing, learning, and building community. My background in production agriculture has instilled in me the importance of integrating annual and perennial food production for a sustainable future. For the past several seasons we have been working on the first phase of the design - to establish a productive market garden where we produce annual and perennial fruit and vegetable, and enact practices to improve overall soil health. 

The recent planting of orchard trees marks a significant step in realizing our vision for a larger orchard as a part of the whole site design. We're also implementing water management techniques, planting nut trees, and reintroducing native species. 

I am incredibly grateful for this partnership in helping us realize this vision and move towards a more resilient way of living and working with the land. I am excited to see how our partnership evolves in the coming years. Food is a beautiful and inspiring aspect of life, and I am grateful for the opportunity to interact with it in this way. 

Food Champions of Cincinnati: Ellie Suggs' Story

In 2024, CPI received a generous grant award from the City of Cincinnati's Boots on the Ground program and set about growing “Food Champions" around the west side of the city. By working with leadership already present in these neighborhoods, we were able to assist in launching ten inspiring projects, each one unique to the group of individuals who conceived and orchestrated it. These folks brought their vision, goals, friends, volunteers and hard work, and CPI helped guide and finance to establish significant food production. This year, we are inviting our Food Champs to share their stories.

Ellie Suggs

In her own words…

I’ve lived in Cincinnati my whole life - when I was born my family lived in Cheviot, and we’ve always identified as proud West Siders, so taking the job as Director of Agriculture at Cincinnati Urban Promise (CUP) in Westwood felt like coming full circle!

My overarching interests are in human food security and ecological restoration, so I have loved learning about permaculture’s applications in edible landscapes through CPI!

My journey with growing started in college, where I majored in Biology and researched population genetics of native plants to support the habitat restoration efforts of Great Parks. Since then, I’ve shifted my efforts to focus more directly on making food and outdoor education more accessible to urban areas.

At CUP, my job is to provide local preK-12th grade students with agricultural and conservation education so they can grow up to be food-independent residents who care about the ecological wellbeing of our city. To aid in this, we are striving to create an almost entirely edible landscape on our property, with plantings of native perennials and annual vegetables along with some pollinator plantings for education (and aesthetics!).

When I saw Susan VonderHaar’s gardens at Dater Montessori, I just knew I needed to collaborate with her! Sure enough, CPI has been an invaluable partner thus far as CUP now has a fruit tree orchard and berry patch where we used to have lawn and weeds. We are so excited to see what the rest of 2025 brings!

Stay tuned for more Food Champion stories!

CPI Featured on Cincinnati Bucket List

We were featured in a Redfin article! Check it out here: Things to Do in Cincinnati: A Bucket

List of Adventures in Cincinnati

Spring 2024 Volunteer Opportunities

Want to help Cincinnati Permaculture Institute prepare for the spring season and maybe learn some new gardening skills along the way? Below is our volunteer schedule.

NURSERY

Saturday, February 10, 11-2:

Saturday, March 9th, 11-2

Saturday, March 30th, 11-2

Wednesdays, April 17 and 24th, 4-dusk

Tuesdays in May: May 7, 14 and 28, 5 PM to 8 PM

Our nursery manager Howard Zuefle will be onsite for all volunteer days providing instruction and access to our tools and materials. Come dressed for the weather, whatever it may be! Our nursery is at 824 Enright Ave. Price Hill Cincinnati (in the back of the lot, behind the greenhouse) and parking is available on Enright and Terry St.

OTHER PROJECTS

Sunday, February 18, 2-4 p.m.: Button Making at the Reading branch of the Cincinnati Public Library - Help our events & marketing committee make buttons to use at our events table this year. All supplies provided. Kids welcome!

SIGN UP

Registration is not required, but signing up helps us communicate with you in the event of a change, cancellation, or other details for each volunteer date. Use this link to be added to our volunteer roster!

QUESTIONS?

Contact us at info@cincinnatipermacultureinstitute.org

Raising a Toast: Ten Kinds of Gratitude for 2023

It is said that success results when opportunity meets preparation.

This is meaningful to me in my first full year as Director of Cincinnati Permaculture Institute. Nothing comes about in a vacuum. It’s always a number of people and events that align for a path of success; that help you prepare, that bring opportunities.

It seems my primary duty this year was to observe and interact with the exciting energy that has been channeled to CPI. In 2023 we welcomed five new guest teachers into three PDC classes that were filled with warm, eager learners. The PDC courses have delivered the five newest board members to us and they keep us moving forward. Our founders remain and provide sage guidance.  Our deepening relationships with committed communities and individuals hold great promise for future developments.

At times I have felt pushed to my personal limits when presented with decision-making and the discomfort of growing pains. But I know we are on very solid ground and well prepared for the opportunities that await us. After all, we create our own success, yes?!

Susan VonderHaar

Together We’re Better: Ten Kinds of Gratitude for 2023

Growing Value Nursery gets some TLC before spring plant sales start

October Harvest Festival Potluck Dinner

Making art with compostable veggies at the Summer Solstice party

Westwood Grows bed installations

Learning about soil at the July 2023 PDC at Antioch

Our 2023 Yearlong PDC Graduates + Lead Teacher Doug Crouch

• New “Neighbors” : We welcomed 12 new members, or as we like to call them, Neighbors, through our membership program that sustains and supports us. We look forward to seeing them at the Growing Value nursery, where members enjoy additional discounts and special shopping hours.

• OneSource gave us a nonprofit wellness check-up and found our organization to be dedicated, effective, transparent, and responsible stewards of our resources. Their suggested strategy is to build our capacity to increase impact. Maybe you or someone you know would be interested in joining our board or working with a committee? 

• Expanding Beyond Cincinnati: Antioch College in Yellow Springs asked us to partner in offering a summer intensive PDC in July. This partnership continues with the second offering scheduled for Spring of 2024. 

• Record-Breaking Growth: The flagship Year Long Permaculture Design Course saw a record number of registrants, growing our total number of graduates to over 300 in 15 years.

• Clear the Nursery: Growing Value Nursery nearly sold out of stock this year! We were able to source some stock locally and organically from growers in the bioregion. New plants arrive in April. 

• Neighborhood Impact: Thanks to the City of Cincinnati’s Office of Urban Agriculture grant funding, we partnered with Westwood Grows and Lincoln Heights Community Development Council and installed perennial, edible plants in nine different residences, schools, and churches. 

• Bringing the Party: We hosted or joined several events, including Spring and Fall Plant Sales, a Harvest Celebration at the Price Hill Greenhouse, the Monarch Festival at Christ the King Church, and a beautiful Summer Solstice gathering at Treasure Lake.

• Getting Our Hands Dirty: We broke ground on our newest continuing education program, “Permaculture Implementation,” on December 9 in Florence, KY with 17 volunteers.

• We Are the Champions: We join many other Green Cincinnati Plan Champions working on six action steps, including “Training farmers and gardeners to increase success, including adaptation to a changing climate.”

• All Aboard: We extend a very special thanks to our board and committee members who work tirelessly to improve CPI and strengthen our community web.

We can’t say it enough: THANK YOU for being part of our mission to create a resilient permanent culture in Cincinnati. We are here for you, with you, and because of you, whether you’re a PDC student, a teacher, a community leader, a nursery customer, a volunteer, a neighbor — you are part of this ecosystem and your contribution matters!