Designing For Life - where Permaculture meets Wilding

Are you seeking inspiration and tools to live a more ecological life – meeting your needs whilst making space for the rest of life as well?
This course explores how to garden and manage land for the benefit of all beings, including ourselves, and shares ways to observe and analyse our spaces and design for abundance at this time of challenge and global die off.

Permaculture is a way of observing more deeply what is going on around us – tuning into natural patterns and processes, and learning from the effects of our actions. By using tried and tested Permaculture Principles and design techniques, we can foster a more resilient, regenerative abundance for ourselves and the rest of life, in our gardens, farms, the wider landscape and much more.

Wilding is a term used by Isabella Tree in her book of the same name that shared her and Charlie Burrell’s  journey transforming the Knepp Estate in West Sussex over 20 years from a failing dairy farm to one of the most wildlife rich spaces in Southern England, whilst still producing food and turning the farm into a financial success.

Wilding is used here to mean creating more habitat for the rest of life – allowing more space for diversity, abundance, connectivity and emergence in our gardens, farms and shared spaces.
The common term ‘Rewilding’ is more usually associated with large areas of land (100Ha +) and high animal intervention/low human intervention strategies, which are usually not applicable on the smaller scale.
Wilding can incorporate a wider range of techniques than rewilding. It can be done in an intentional, focussed way similar to traditional conservation – pruning blackthorn trees to create habitat for Brown Hairstreak butterflies, or putting up nest boxes for example – or in a more emergent way, such as leaving messy edges and deadwood to rot in a garden or on a farm, or by intentionally mimicking the actions of our lost herbivores and carnivores, trusting that life will find a way to use the eco niches that develop.

This course will include food growing tips for gardeners, ways to ‘Wild’ your land, nature connection practices and a solid grounding in Permaculture thinking. 

Permaculture Design can also be used in many areas of life beyond just land use… Participants will be able to use the design principles and tools shared during the weekend to make more life affirming choices with both land and more generally in their lives afterwards.