I hold a Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design from the Permaculture Association of Britain (PAB). I am also an Induction Tutor with PAB. My apprentices are automatically part of Scotland’s Perma College 1, where they can get support from other tutors and apprentices.
Here I provide an overview of my diploma and links to some of my permaculture designs
Design 1: Household Food Waste
My first design explored reducing food waste, including packaging, in my household. It helped me to skill-up on permaculture design, by integrating a weekly meal planning design loop.
Design 2: University Course
For my second design, I decided to use my permaculture skills to design a course at the University of Edinburgh, where I work, using permaculture principles and addressing the three central ethics of Earth Care, People Care and Fair Shares. The resulting course, Nature, Greenspace and Health has been running for 4 years as a third-year UG option course that is open to all students at the University of Edinburgh. Almost 100 students have taken it. They have reported enjoying having the opportunity to contribute to meaningful change while earning academic credit. It has contributed to the University of Edinburgh’s Biodiversity Strategy, to its Hedgehog-Friendly Campus Status, to the development of the Green Infrastructure index and app.
To see a video presentation on this course, go to: Canva Presentation
Design 3: Backgarden Forest Garden
Over the last 10 years, I’ve transformed a completely lifeless backgarden in Edinburgh into a thriving forest garden that is good for the more-than-human world and good for my household. This garden produces a number of edibles including: black berries, tay berries, black currants, red currants, apples, plums, pears, cobnuts, grapes, chives, Welsh onions, Good King Henry, Caucasian spinach, Daubenton kale, mint and marjoram. We have foxes, hedgehogs and a range of birds visiting. Here are a series of slides illustrating the regeneration of this urban site.
Design 8: Roseburn Park Plan
Design 10: Ongoing Design Web for Sustainable Household
For my final design, I used the Design Web from Looby Macnamara and created a tool that brought together all the useful things I’d learned over the course of my diploma into one place: an upcycled A5 binder. This ‘transitional object’ provided me with what I needed to finish one stage of my permaculture life and enter into the next.
Here is a useful People Care tool I developed to get a full picture of what needs a particular life design element is fulfilling:
Restorying the Earth 