Richard Higgins, raised on a Somerset farm in the UK, attained his NDA, degree equivalent, at the Royal Berkshire College of Agriculture. Later he completed a ten year postgraduate study of the works of Sir Albert Howard while travelling and teaching from China to Hawaii. Sir Albert is now considered the Grandfather of organic farming and his research was from the Permanent Agriculture of the east, which is where the term Permaculture was derived. Richard has become a world leading exponent of this work. He presented the Howard (memorial) lecture 2009 at the University of Coventry, for Nigeria to ‘Go Organic’ (transcript sent to HRH The Prince of Wales, who made an immediate response). 

Gary Finch completed his Design Course in April 2005 and spent the next seven years writing up his design work to earn the Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design in March 2012. He has led several introductory weekends & guest tutored on three full design courses. His work involves him in supporting people to live independently in the community & his aim is to provide low cost examples of urban permaculture and to support closer ties between the town and country. He is currently retrofitting his urban semi into an eco-home.

Joel Salatin is a third generation, beyond organic farmer and author whose family owns and operates the 550 acre Polyface Farm in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. The farm produces salad bar beef, pigaerator pork, pastured poultry, eggmobile eggs, forage-based rabbits pastured turkey and forestry products and direct markets everything to more than 3,000 families, 10 retail outlets, and 50 restaurants through on-farm sales and metropolitan buying clubs. The farm features prominently in Michael Pollan's New York Times bestseller Omnivore's Dilemma and the award-winning documentarys, Food Inc & Fresh.

Bert grew up on the edge of a forest  in Flanders. Very soon he played in that fantastic scenery with forests, fields, empty farms and enjoyed being surrounded by wilderness.

A period of nature conservation campaigns and travelling ended up in Tazzie around 2000. Bert loved the permaculture immersion overthere during his wwoofing period. Inspired by visits to permaculture projects and people like David Holmgren and Robina McCurdy ,Berts heart kept on pushing towards the dream of a permacultural educational farm. And that is what still keeps speeding up his heartbeat.

Lien first came across permaculture in the summer of 2008 in Totnes when writing a story on the transition movement. Her curiosity was sparked at once. During her traveling and living in different places with wilderness within hand reach, such as Scandinavia and the Canary Islands, permaculture remained a recurrent theme. Eventually she gave in to its attraction and started a design course in the Voedselbos (food forest) in Belgium with Bert D’Hondt. She completed the course with a design about facilitating a solo retreat, an event based on an old coming of age ritual during which people spend a couple of days by themselves in the wilderness. Because of her fascination for peoplecare Lien returned to England in 2012 for a People and Permaculture Course with Looby Macnamara. Before that, she was involved in peoplecare through working with the Corepower method for personal leadership, about which she helped writing the book ‘Corepower. Zelfsturing vanuit de Kern’, and which she is currently translating into English.

George Sobol is an experienced trainer and facilitator who has been organising and teaching permaculture courses since 1989. After growing up in a Russian-speaking family, George completed a Russian degree at Manchester University in 1973. Moving to Bristol, he then trained as a cabinet maker and had a key role in the establishment of Bristol Craft Centre – co-operatively run community workshops. Connections with the Dartington Hall Trust led to a move to Devon in 1983, where he worked as a designer for their furniture and joinery manufacturing company. Twenty-plus years’ work in permaculture design and teaching started in 1989. After completing a Permaculture Design Course with Andy Langford, George took on the role of co-ordinator for the Permaculture Association [Britain] for the next four years.

Phil began making compost by recycling grass mowings through an elephant. Since those years, caring for the gardens of his local wildlife park in Somerset he has qualified in horticulture, training & education. He discovered the 'P' word in the late 1980's & holds the Certificate in Permaculture Design. Originally inspired by a childhood amongst the plants & gardens of his mother & grandfather, Phil trained at Cannington College, Somerset.

Martin Crawford started his working life a computer programmer but his passion for organic gardening quickly led to a change in career. Martin has had broad and varied horticultural/agricultural experience over the last 25 years - he has worked for the Yarner Trust in North Devon teaching small-scale organic agriculture; grown food for a small hotel on the Isle of Iona; restored the walled gardens of a manor house in mid-Devon; and run his own organic market garden and tree nursery in South Devon. His experience led him to the concept of forest gardening as a sustainable system that can flourish in our changing climate conditions and it was this that led to the founding of the Agroforestry Research Trust in 1992, where he has been systematically researching plant interactions, unusual crops, etc over the past 15 years.

Kirk Gadzia is the foremost Holistic Management (HM) Certified Educator in the world. With over 25 years experience in the field across 6 continents, Kirk has worked closely with HM founder Allan Savory and is an associate of the Savory Institute. Kirk has formal qualifications in Rangeland Management and has co-authored several books, the most notable being 'Bullseye! Targeting you Rangeland Health Objectives', which land managers around the world use as a primary resource. Kirk is a thorough and engaging trainer and together with his wife Tamara Gadzia, Publications Director of the Quivira Coalition Quivira and an experienced landscape restorationalist, makes HM easy.

Pietro Zucchetti is the founder and coordinator of the Permaculture Institute of Italy. He has got experience in designing urban permaculture systems and his smallholding in Italy "The Rainbow Tree" that applies permaculture and keyline design principles. He has been trained in several disciplines connected to permaculture like: RegenAG, forest gardening, sustainable woodland management, coppicing, pruning old fruit trees, beekeeping and arboriculture. He holds a BSc Hon. in Environmental Studies and a Dip. Perm. Des. He writes for an Italian magazine about permaculture and he is on the teacher's register of the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia.

Eugenio Gras is a dynamic 30 year veteran of regenerative agriculture with vast experience across the world, particularly in South America, Australia & Europe. His organisation MasHumus has an alumni of thousands of people, with their primary focus being to bringing cost-effective and simple regenerative agricultural technologies into the hands of every producer. A master communicator who speaks 5 languages, Eugenio engages all manner of audiences wherever he goes with his broad skill and wide experience. Eugenio is the author of 'Cosecha de Agua y Tierra' ('Working with Water and Land') which has sold thousands of copies around the world. A native of Guadalajara in central Mexico, Eugenio is an experienced builder, dairy farmer and cheese maker, consultant and trainer.

Jo has been passionate about Permaculture and its possibilities since 1990. She first did a Permaculture Design course in 1992. In 1998 she did the course: 'Teaching Permaculture Creatively' and recently completed her Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design. She has designed around 20 Permaculture gardens and projects. The design ethos also informed her work as a Landscape Architect in 100's of other projects.

Joe Atkinson is the learning coordinator at the Permaculture Association, where he organises events, supports teacher development, collates & develops teaching materials, and runs the group visit scheme. He also runs an organic gardening business and teaches permaculture. He acts as a director of a new low impact, affordable co-housing development in suburban Leeds, called LILAC. He holds an MSc in Architecture: Advanced Environmental & Energy Studies, and was a contributing author of the Centre for Alternative Technology's 2007 ZeroCarbonBritain report. He completed his PDC in 2007 and will be completing his diploma in applied permaculture design soon...

Darren J. Doherty has extensive experience across the world in Permaculture project design, development & management. A career-­long focus on the profitable retrofit of broadacre landscapes has seen Darren acclaimed as a pioneer in this important & often overlooked field. He is a Certified Whole Farm Planner (University of Melbourne), Approved Keyline® Designer, Accredited Permaculture Trainer (APT®) & Certified in Workplace Training & Assessment and formerly a Registered Teacher of the ‘The Permaculture Institute’ (teacher registration system ceased in March of 2010).

Stefan believes that we now have the answers to all the global environmental problems in the world and have done for some time, and that it’s the communities and people that now need to catch up. He sees Permaculture as the thread that connects all the issues, can empower each of us find our own personal solutions and together build a creative sustainable future.

Stefan has been practising Permaculture for over 15 years now, starting with woodland management and bee-keeping - and now focuses more on Community, Urban and Organisational uses of Permaculture design. He completed his design certificate with David Holmgren and George Sobol, and completed the Teacher Training with Designed Visions, and has taught mainly in London and the South-East.

He is a trained Naturopath & Bodyworker who runs his family’s B&B in central London www.stathanshotel.com, where he also makes mosaics and stained glass windows.

He is currently Chair of the Permaculture Association UK and co-founder of the London Permaculture Network that organises the annual summer London Permaculture Festival.
 

Miki Dedijer devotes his life to helping people deepen their connections to nature, self and others. A trained ecologist with a bachelor of arts from Princeton University, he has 20 years experience as journalist, photographer and documentary filmmaker focusing on man's relationship to nature. A former board member of Sweden's Survival Guild and a certified permaculturist, he now runs programs and trainings in nature awareness, holistic tracking and conservation biology through Vild Kultur. Among his long-term mentors in nature awareness and community building are Jon Young, founder of the Wilderness Awareness School and the 8 Shields Program, and Mark Morey of the Institute for Natural Learning.

Abby has a background in Design and Horticulture. She completed a Permaculture Design course in 2006, and the Permaculture Teacher Training in 2008.

Where she lives in Bristol, Abby is an active member of the local Transition Initiative, organising awareness raising and reskilling events. Currently, Abby is working with a local Permaculture project, developing an allotment site into a community garden, and over the last two years she has been teaching gardening and horticulture in an inner city school.

John Croft is co-founder of the Gaia Foundation of Western Australia. Although Australian by birth, he is a confirmed Internationalist, having worked in a number of countries. At the age of 17 he knew that our purpose in life is to leave the world a better place than it would have been had we never existed. To this end, since 1986 he has been a passionate supporter of the work of the Gaia Foundation and worked in community development and education in Australia, English speaking Africa, Geneva, Paris, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. The Dragon Dreaming method has been introduced from Sri Lanka to Brazil and from Ghana to Finland. Also trained by Joanna Macy, John has written and been published widely in many fields.

In 2009 at the final inch of her studies Mari Korhonen was fortunate to come across Geoff and Nadia Lawton. She studied and trained with them at the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia for three months as part of the practical training of her university degree, BSc in Environmental Engineering. This combined with another six months of experience in farm forestry, tree planting, biological landscape restoration and erosion repair around NSW transformed her whole world view and offered an entirely new approach to practical sustainability as well. Currently she is based in Finland.

Peppi has been interested in natural environments from a very young age. He grew up on the island of Malta close to the beach and spend most of his young days around traditional farmers and villagers. His interest in living closer to the earth took him on various travels. In 2001-2002 he worked on a number of permaculture farms in Australia and that was an excellent chapter in his life. Peppi is a certified permaculturist and also the Founder of the Permaculture Research Foundation for Malta. He started an ambitious permaculture project on a dry, windy and arid landscape eight years ago, which has attracted many individuals, groups, reporters, documentary makers etc. Although, much has been achieved, he believes that the bloom is still underway. Peppi is currently finishing studies at The Centre for Alternative Technology, Wales. He has also been giving workshops and hands on training to a number of interested people and foresees a growing momentum in this ‘earth awareness living’.