OAEC supports diverse communities to design their own regenerative systems at the regional and local scale.
Our cookbook is a collection of inventive recipes inspired by seasonal eating from our biodiverse Mother Garden, orchards and Wildlands Preserve.
Experience the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center through beautiful slideshows of our Guest Houses, Meeting Hall, Kitchen, Garden, Wildlands and more.
OAEC serves as a retreat center for networks, public agencies, foundations and other groups working towards social and environmental change.
Our 100% Certified Organic plant nursery specializes in open-pollinated perennials including edible landscaping plants, rare and endangered food crops, drought tolerant ornamentals and habitat plants - all tested in our onsite gardens and appropriate for our bioregion.
OAEC offers the longest consistently running two-week Permaculture Design Certification course in the West. Immerse yourself in information, ideas and inspiration on how to design sustainable, regenerative systems in balance with your home ecosystem.
OAEC collaborates with Food For Thought (FFT), a Sonoma County food bank serving people with HIV/AIDS and other critical illnesses, to maintain a robust one-acre garden at the facility that provides fresh produce for 700 clients. The Mother Garden Biodiversity Program considers the FFT garden to be its most prominent daughter garden.
Doug Gosling, Mother Garden Biodiversity Program Director, helped to establish the garden at FFT in 1999. Doug currently manages and maintains the garden with the help of a dedicated team of FFT volunteers. The garden at FFT has evolved into a core program of the food bank.
Before OAEC was established and this 80-acre property was stewarded by the Center for Seven Generations, all of the produce generated by the gardens was donated to Food For Thought in the early 1990s.
Keeping in the spirit of this collaboration, Doug Gosling and Rachel Gardner, now FFT’s Deputy Executive Director and Client Services Manager, worked together to create a garden in the backyard of Henry House, then the Sonoma County AIDS hospice. The partnership continued to evolve when OAEC worked with FFT to create a garden around the new Food For Thought Building in 1999.
Here are the ways that OAEC supports our oldest daughter garden at the Food For Thought Food Bank: