These events have sadly been cancelled for this year. Hoping to run some similar days in 2018 

I'm really pleased to announce a programme of (Yorkshire) Dales Diploma Days over the next few months, for anyone doing the Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design. These will take place at two different locations on a variety of days,  with the aim of being as accessible to as many Diploma apprentices in the area as possible. 

The functions of the Dales Diploma Days are:- 

* To provide a space to focus on getting some design documentation completed, (both venues have great internet access). 
* To meet with other apprentices - guild/peer support time.
* The opportunity to have a tutorial with me. 
* Visit a great venue. 
* It's possible to video link  to either of  venues (Skype, Facetime etc) for guild time or a tutorial.

You are welcome to either attend the whole day or just turn up for an hour or two

Those Plant People is a LAND centre in the village of Steeton in between Keighley and Skipton. We have access to a fab classroom there.

Settle Community and Business Hub is a wonderful new community project in the centre of Settle, a small market town in the heart of the Dales.

There is a 'Pay as you feel' (suggest £5-10)  request to cover the hire of the venue, hot drinks etc. Any tutorials are at the usual Permaculture Association set rate of £30/hr (or part of your existing route fee if I am your personal tutor)

For more details about my role as a tutor click here 

The following dates for 2017 have been confirmed. Please get in touch with me if you are thinking of coming along or would like further details.

This time last year I wrote a post about how we had started to implement a design to improve the fertility and water retaining properties of the soil in our garden in Andalucia. Over the year we have already noticed a big difference in the structure of the soil and water retention in the areas we treated. This year, as planned, we decided to chip the fresh almond tree prunnings as they happened. These then included lots of leaves which added an increased nitrogen concentration to the chips. Like many topics in permaculture design there is an ongoing healthy discussion about the pros verses the cons of using woodchip as a mulch to improve soil. Rather than discuss these here, I have linked to some of the main points in other articles, at the end of this post. Our observations had indicated that here using wood chip as a mulch was likely to be beneficial and worth including as part of our soil design. 

After several weeks of sitting in a heap, being exposed to both heavy rainfall and warm sun, the chips had started to heat up and the inner area already had lots of evidence of fungal activity commencing. The beds we are building to grow lots of annual edible plants,  were either mulched with a layer of goat manure or overwintered beans last year, which meant that they will tolerate the big spike of carbon the wood chips will initially bring, much more effectively. A deep layer of the beautiful chipped mixture was added to all the beds from last year, and as a mulch around the trees planted over the last 2 years too.  Im going to be closely observing  the areas mulched over the next year to analyse the immediate effects of the almond wood chip/leaf mix. I'll also be comparing the health and growth of the same species and varieties of annual edible plants: - planted 1)  in the wood chipped mulched areas, 2) areas which had manure only added (last year) and 3) in areas of the garden where we have not changed the soil at all yet. 

I've read some great accessible articles about the use of wood chip in edible gardens, both benefits and possible challenges  - some of my favourite ones are listed below 

Building garden soil with wood mulch - Mother Earth News  

Woodchips- the secrets to effortless, inexpensive biodynamic gardening - Mercola 

5 things you should know about wood chip mulch - Reformation Acres

Mulches and mulching - Royal Horticultural Society

​Why we should use woodchips better - The Telegraph 

So, today I'm pleased to be able to co-ordinate some time to write, with it being the correct day to write about #ThreeThingsThursday.  You can read more about this regular day of appreciation and gratitude  here 

#1 - This week  I was part of a fab group of people in my local community in Spain, who got together to chat about composting toilets! We met at Trinity and Paul's home, who are keen have a composting loo as part of their guest facilities. As a group we came up with hopefully what will be a great design for them. I'll hopefully be writing more about the compost loo here as the design progresses! We also got to see some of the beautiful permaculture inspired garden design work, Clair, another friend, had been undertaking on the land. 

#2 - Its been the second week of my annual leave from my nursing work, and I've really enjoyed spending many hours of each day sat in the sun reading books and hanging out with my furry family!

#3 - bean, cucumber, courgette and squash seeds sown last week are already starting to make a very welcome appearance for the edible garden  here in Spain 

Yesterday I celebrated finishing a big chapter in my journey of development as a Facilitator of people centred permaculture work. The year long programme involved mentoring creating and undertaking 3 designs for my work, participating in a variety of online and face to face gatherings with others doing the same course, and maintaining a reflective journal of my learning, experience and accountability.

The course has been a really important and motivating factor underpinning my current work as a permaculture practitioner and designer.  I'll be spending the next month or so designing the next phase of my work, developing the workshops, mentoring, designing and tutoring work already undertaken as well as exploring some exciting new project ideas. These will be detailed and updated here on my website 

Last night, as I spent time on Skype with others from the course, sharing my portfolio of designs and reflections on experiences of the past year, I felt so much gratitude that I have been able to be part of this programme. It felt very fitting to use my own "5 Elements" permaculture tool, inspired by my Earth Based spirituality,  to guide my reflections in this presentation. This tool is something I will be writing more about in another post. Doing the Facilitator training has been a fantastic way of taking a lot of the design knowledge and experience gained in my Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design to a new level, as well as making and embedding connections with some other wonderful  practitioners focusing on people centred  permaculture projects.


For more details about participating in future  People & Permaculture facilitator training  see this link - you can also read more about my experience of the training here