(Editor's note: Our continuing series that looks at Oakland Local's picks for people/organizations to watch in 2011. See all profiles in this series.)

Christoper Shein is the Bay Area's resident permaculture design guru and for the last 10 years, he has taught the Permaculture Design class at Merritt Community College’s Landscape Horticulture Department, inspiring hundreds of students to build new gardens and integrate permaculture's principles of sustainability into surrounding landscapes.

Shein just signed a contract with Timber Press to write a permaculture gardening book in 2011, with the working title of "The Edible Gardener's Guide to Permaculture."

Shein has been responsible for building at least 100 gardens himself in the two decades, through his permaculture design business, Wildheart Gardens. Projects include St. Mary’s Center in Oakland, a homeless senior citizen’s soup kitchen garden; maintaining the Eco House's garden in West Berkeley; and continuously enriching Merritt College's one-acre student garden, which now contains approximately 200 fruit trees. 

For those new to the concept, Shein defines permaculture as being "about earth care and people care."

"It's not defined by using certain techniques, like sheet mulching instead of double digging, or including rainwater harvesting and graywater systems," he adds. "It's the focus on community resiliency - creating mutually beneficial relationships - that defines permaculture."

In 2011, he's excited to partner with Patricia St. John to offer an Edible Landscaping class at Merritt College during the fall semester. The class will be more in-depth than he is able to offer in the permaculture design course.

"Permaculture covers a lot of things that aren't related to gardening," he says. "We wanted to have a more gardening-focused class, just about the edible aspect."

Shein estimates that worldwide, more than 750,000 people have taken permaculture design courses.

"Urban homesteading is really taking off and permaculture is a broader design tool, about energy and water and community structures so it's very complimentary," Shein says. "Sustainability is a cultural shift and permaculture is right there."

Read more profiles in our 11 for 11 series.

About Jess Watson

Jess Watson is a North Oakland resident interested in the links between art, sustainability and cooperative living. She is a graduate student and a freelance grantwriter. In her free time, she makes mosaics, cans plums and forages. Check out Jess' blog at quirkyurbanite.blogspot.com.