Gary Finch completed his Design Course in April 2005. He has just been given approval to proceed to accredit for his Diploma in applied Permaculture Design. 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.

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.

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.

Eugenio Gras is a dynamic 30 year veteran of regenerative agriculture with vast experience across the world, particularly in South America, Australia and Europe. His organisation MasHumus has an alumni of millions 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.

Jillian spent much of her younger years in the outdoors whilst growing up in the province of Quebec: riding and training horses, working as a white water river guide, teaching downhill skiing, and working in the bush. She was deeply imprinted by nature through these experiences, and they developed in her a facility to see and feel patterns and flows. Jillian went on to study the biophysical world at the University of Guelph in the province of Ontario, and followed her heart and gut through her studies which culminated in a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture. Though she enjoyed what she learned, she thought that there was much that was missing. Permaculture helped to remedy that when she took her Permaculture Design Course at The Ark on Prince Edward Island in 1996.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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’.

Stefan has been practising Permaculture for over 12 years, starting with woodland management and now focusing more on Community, Urban and Organisational uses of Permaculture design. He completed his design certificate with David Holmgren and George Sobol, and completed Teacher Training with Designed Visions. He is currently Chair of the British Permaculture Association.

Jules Heavens is an experienced workshop leader, facilitator, therapist and coach. Trained in many varied avenues of healing, personal development, spiritual practice and wellbeing she offers facilitation and support based on her belief that we hold all our answers in our wisdom within. Combining creative processes, voice and sound work, movement and meditation she creates the space and catalyst for the enquiry journey and remembering of the true self.

www.JulesHeavens.com 

Graham is an experienced permaculture practitioner, designer and teacher. He is a member of the Council of Management of the Permaculture Association (Britain), and holds the Diploma in Permaculture Design (Dip Perm Des). In addition he has written, illustrated and self-published a number of books and pamphlets through Spiralseed, a small business enterprise dedicated to  promoting permaculture and earthright living using illustration, literature and other media.

Steve has designed, set up and managed a pioneering agroforestry demonstration site, developed a programme of courses in sustainable land use and managed urban tree nurseries in Bristol.

He also spent two years as a manager at Dyfed Permaculture Farm Trust. This project being one of the countries first attempts at broad scale permaculture design.

Gladys is from Holland and has been living in the UK for 13 years. She has a background in Fine Art and environmental education for children. She completed a Permaculture Design Course in Brighton in 2003, and is currently in her fourth year of undertaking the Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design. She is a mother of two. Before moving to Frome, Somerset in 2007, she worked for the riverOcean Foundation - an environmental education charity in Brighton.