Joel Glanzberg

Joel has broad experience in environmental design and ecological restoration projects, particularly in the arid regions of the southwest US and Latin America.

Joel has been working with the Tracking Project for 5 years. The awareness and observation  skills used in large scale systems as in Permaculture, provide a good perspective on the use these skills at other scales. An instructor and participant in the Mentor Training Program (Nurturing the Roots) Joel has also co-taught "The Art of Seeing" and "Tracking in the Southwest" as well as weekend classes with native youth in Canyon de Chelly and at the Bosque del Apache. 

He has also worked extensively in the field of regenerative agriculture, including recent agricultural restoration projects in Maryland, Hubbell Trading Post and at the Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania. He has worked as a consultant to the City of Santa Fe on watershed restoration, where he has helped to design and implement programs for restoration as well as public education and engagement. Current work includes collaboration with internationally known environmental artists Helen and Newton Harrison on restoring the Santa Fe River watershed and with pueblo basket weavers on the Pojoaque River.

An active author and educator in the fields of permaculture and ecological restoration, he is skilled in cross-cultural communication and teaching. Joel has taught throughout the U.S., and South America, and worked with a number of Native American tribes and communities. . His research has focused on the integration of traditional agricultural/agro-forestry techniques and species from dryland areas world-wide.

Joel is co-founder and director of Flowering Tree Permaculture Institute. Flowering Tree’s half-acre demonstration site at Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, has caught world attention for its low cost, family scale permanent agricultural systems. Groups from across the United States, Botswana, the Philippines, Equador and Canada have attended classes and toured Flowering Tree.

A graduate of St. John’s, he has studied with Bill Mollison, John Todd, Rosalind Creasy, Gabriel Howearth and Gary Nabhan He has taught classes at Flowering Tree, Living Structures, Prescott College, the University of Northern Arizona, University of New Mexico, the Desert Botanical Garden, the Permaculture Institute of Peru and Ecoversity. His early work at Santa Clara Pueblo has been featured in Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway, Natural Home, New Garden Journal, American Horticulturist Magazine, New Mexico Solar Energy Association Journal, Droppings, Designer/Builder Magazine, and The New Garden television show. He was recently honored by the Center for Sustainable Environments at NAU and the Museum of Northern Arizona for his work with the traditional crops and agriculture of the American Southwest.