C.V.
Claudia Joseph
Director: New York Permaculture Exchange
permaculturexchange@gmail.com
P.O. Box 44
Tillson, NY 12486
2018 – present
Founder and Director, New York Permaculture Exchange
Website: www.permaculture-exchange.org
Facebook pages:
New York Permaculture Exchange
Permaculture Festival: NYC
2020 – present
Organizer: Rondout Valley Permaculture Meetup
2022- present
Rosendale Recreation Comission
2025-present
Recycling Oversight Committee, Ulster County
2022
Contributing Author The City is an Ecosystem: Sustainable Education, Policy, and Practice Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
(Chapter 8) Community Design for Public Engagement
Claudia Joseph moved to the Mid-Hudson Valley in 2019 to practice permaculture design. The principles embrace whole systems thinking, creating social as well as physically functional systems. A communications major and lifetime gardener, Ms Joseph is informed by the agricultural traditions of VA and Washington, D.C. that embrace gardening as a cultural practice as well as by the diversely productive community gardeners of NYC. Her New York Permaculture Exchange (NYPE) demonstration site is located between Kingston and New Paltz and is accessible by public transportation.
Ms. Joseph taught numerous Permaculture Design training courses, as well as garden related classes and workshops in CA and NYC 1996 – 2018. She is a cultural creative and has been the subject of articles and film projects. She was highly visible in community gardening and public compost systems in Brooklyn, where she lived and worked from 2001-2018. Ms Joseph managed a 14 ton compost system at Garden of Union as her work shift for Park Slope Food Cooperative as well as starting compost systems at the local middle school and nearby park.
Ms. Joseph was the first to teach permaculture design at Merritt College (Oakland, CA), Berkeley Ecology Center, Oakland Botanical Demonstration Gardens, and in NYC at the New York Open Center, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, Just Food, The Old Stone House, and NYC Department of Parks and Recreation: participating in numerous panels, workshops and gatherings for diverse organizations. Ms Joseph is credentialed by Permaculture Institute of North America as well as Permaculture Institute USA.
Ms. Joseph designs for public and private projects, incorporating social design, effective communication and event planning along with systems development. An independent artist, permaculture consultant and teacher, Ms. Joseph was employed as the Director of Environmental Education at the Old Stone House of Brooklyn and the (three acre) Washington Park in Park Slope, NY from 2004 – 2018, where she helped design, install and maintained an interactive, public landscape reflecting the Dutch colonial period. The gardens in Washington Park and at the adjacent Middle School 51 beautified over an acre of ground while creating green infrastructure at the top of the Gowanus flood zone and providing educational & community engagement opportunities.
Shaped by permaculture design principles and cooperatively installed with students and volunteers of all ages, themes of self-reliance and environmental stewardship are reflected in the plantings for food, medicine, craft material, and wildlife support. By reinterpreting the historical uses of a landscape, a framework for relating to climate change and water flows, as well as health and well-being was created and thrives in Washington Park.
Ms. Joseph consulted for the UN Headquarters Food Garden 2016 – 2018, presenting and providing support with permaculture students on group gardening days. She contributed to the art project S.W.A.L.E., a floating food barge and education center, donating advice, plants and a workshop, in 2016. Her community garden work includes mentoring others on non-violent communication techniques, consensus process, increasing access and building leadership. She consulted with 596 Acres on their guide: Communication Tips for Community Gardeners.
A dedicated community gardener, Ms. Joseph helped design and manage the 14-ton compost system at the Garden of Union (GOU) from 2003 – 2018 as well as acting as President of the Board of Directors from 2003 – 2015. Two years were needed to rewrite operating agreements for the garden – in a consensus based process – as well as transforming the compost system from an unhygienic nuisance to a model system. One of the only communally operated gardens of over 600 in NYC, GOU worked in partnership with the Park Slope Food Cooperative (PSFC), an organization that grew from 5,000 to 16,000 members during this period. Ms Joseph spearheaded the redesign of their compost distribution program, expanding it to 6 community garden sites. The training program and input schedules were also restructured to adapt to the larger scale. Six large capacity units were constructed at the OSH-MS 51 site under her guidance and incorporated in the PSFC program.
Ms. Joseph was raised on a Virginia horse farm, worked in arts and music production in Washington, D.C. and lived and gardened in California for ten years: she brings elements of her past into her present work.