Great trainers are sharing, motivating and supportive. They demonstrate Permaculture by practicing what they teach with a wide range of examples. And they give ideas for other situations beyond their own. They understand other cultures and environments.
35 years evolving
My name is April Sampson-Kelly. Only a few people know what I do, which suits me. I don’t want to be a celebrity. I enjoy the freedom and flexibility of anonymity. And I have practiced and taught Permaculture for 35 years. Now it is time to share my insights and growing concerns for the future of online training.
My early childhood was spent on an army base where a lonely clump of bananas surrounded the septic tank. There were no bird calls, just dogs howling. But when we settled in Wollongong I was suddenly surrounded by beautiful beaches and forests. And a strong sense of place and belonging.
My father had wanted me to be a software writer. He believed that computing was the future and people would work less. And so, in 1986, I got a computer trainee-ship at the local university. By 1993 I had some basic computing skills and a supportive partner and mother. I also had a masters in Creative arts. I knew how to research. And I knew how to teach complex skills. And I had a baby and a toddler. So, I knew how to work. I still loved my environment. And I was fascinated with Permaculture. And I wondered how it would fit in the emerging world of the internet.
Computer games and internet pages last century were painfully slow and had no graphics. Every word mattered. But the fun thing was the equality. Gender didn’t matter. How you looked didn’t figure. Content was all that mattered. And so, I set about to create the first online Permaculture course.
In 1996, my mother and I drove across Australia. We visited my birthplace in Perth and went to the great International Permaculture Conference and Convergence. Thanks to the tireless work of Ross Mars and Permaculture west, the proceedings are still available. And there I met a lot of amazing Permaculture people. And at the Convergence, I saw a small discussion group in a back corner talking about Information Technology [IT]. I told them my idea to start online teaching and they all started offering support. Even Bill Mollison chipped in and said he thought that online teaching could work. And there was a need.
Land-based Permaculture Design Courses are often run by charismatic leaders. So, to make online training successful we offered something different. Our online courses were self-paced, flexible, organised and tailored for the student needs. Also, we adopted a student-focused approach. And I applied my research experience, enthusiasm and applied knowledge to explore many aspects of Permaculture. I was truly lucky to have an informal mentor in Stuart B. Hill. I could ask Stuart deep questions and he would answer straight away. And for this I am forever grateful. Decades later, we had a vibrant food forest and some creative fun. Ted Trainer said – it is not work if you are having fun. We had fun.
Education serves 3 functions
1. Share knowledge and ideas for a wide range of conditions.
2. Motivate and support participants into action
3. Connect people to build resilience through community and integration with their environment.
Sharing Knowledge and Ideas
Knowing how to do something doesn’t mean we know how to teach it. Teaching is a craft in itself using psychology, and communication systems. Teaching Permaculture pulls apart a complex holistic system to show the parts and then describe how the parts interact. The instructor needs to clearly show how they have applied the principles in their own practice. And they need to show examples from other situations. Or at least help their participants find out more about their situation.
Motivating and Supporting
When we motivate participants, we need to follow through. Our support mustn’t end when the course ends. This is where the social design is essential in the growth of Permaculture. Teachers must foster others. The traditional formal education system in the western world has a deeply entrenched economic and academically competitive framework. We must do better. We need to learn from one another, support good work and foster diversity.
Connecting and Providing Ongoing Support
We all grow when we build a network of experts and a community of knowledge keepers.
All training requires an understanding of the work, an ability to break it down, then reconnect the ideas. But online training has extra pitfalls. Online participants are less at risk of being disconnected from their fellow, the ideas and the trainer.
Become a leader in Permaculture Training. Contact us to join our Online Advanced Permaculture Design course starting March 18. April at www.permaculturevisions.com
Permaculture Week began as a simple idea in the Yarra Valley (Victoria, Australia): create a shared moment in the calendar where permaculture could be visible, accessible, and celebrated beyond individual sites and courses. Initiated by Permaculture Yarra Valley, Yarra Valley ECOSS, and PEACE Farm; the first Permaculture Week brought together local talks, garden visits, workshops, and gatherings. There was no central festival and no single organiser running everything. Instead, it was deliberately decentralised, with events hosted by community groups themselves. That principle has remained at the heart of Permaculture Week ever since.
Now entering its seventh year, Permaculture Week has grown well beyond its regional beginnings. Events are now held across multiple Australian states and increasingly internationally, reflecting the expanding relevance of permaculture as a response to ecological, social, and economic challenges.
Permaculture Week 2026 will run from 21–29 March, aligned with the autumn equinox in the Southern Hemisphere. This year’s theme, “Regeneration: People, Place, and Planet,” highlights regeneration as more than landscape repair. It recognises the interdependence of healthy ecosystems, strong communities, and empowered people, including future generations.
At its core, Permaculture Week is about participation. There is no expectation that events be large, polished, or resource-heavy. A short talk, an open garden, a working bee, a film night, a walk-and-talk, or a shared meal can all be powerful ways to make permaculture visible and welcoming. Events may be free or ticketed and are shaped entirely by local hosts.
A key focus for 2026 is creating accessible entry points for new and younger audiences, while continuing to value the depth of experience held within established permaculture networks. By opening gardens, sharing stories, and creating spaces for connection, Permaculture Week helps bridge generations and invite fresh energy into the movement.
All events will be showcased on the national hub, www.permacultureweek.org, making it easier for people to discover what’s happening in their area and for local efforts to gain wider visibility.
Whether you’re part of a long-established permaculture group or just beginning to explore regenerative living, Permaculture Week is an opportunity to contribute in a way that feels achievable and meaningful.
This March, the invitation is simple: share what regeneration looks like where you are.
In 2025 Permaculture Australia awarded eight small grants to organisations in South East Asia and the Pacific. When the grant round was launched permaculture teachers and groups helped spread the invitation to apply. One of the successful grant recipients was Asharprodip Somaj Unnyan Songstha (ASUS) an organisation in Bangladesh seeking support to run a permaculture course in their community which is in a region where Rowe Morrow and other members of PA have taught permaculture.
Following the funding being received. Rowe was sent a letter from the Executive Director of Asharprodip Somaj Unnyan Songstha (ASUS), Poritosh Kumar Mridha. Rowe described the letter as ‘lovely and heartfelt’ and great to share.
In his introduction Poritosh wrote “On behalf of ASUS, I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to you and the Permafund team for your generous support of our mission. Receiving this grant is not only a milestone for our organisation but a vital initiative for the ecological and social healing we aim to foster in our community.”
“Please be assured that the ASUS team is fully committed to implementing this project with the highest standards of integrity and care. We look forward to sharing our progress and the stories of growth that your support has made possible.“
With Best Regards,
Poritosh Kumar Mridha”
More details about ASUS and their project to spread permaculture activities in the Sundarban’s coastal region of Bangladesh. will be shared in future Permaculture Australia newsletters.
All donations made to support Permaculture Australia projects are greatly appreciated and can be made here.
Gatherings have always been part of permaculture. Before newsletters and acronyms, people met around kitchen tables, the backyard fire pit, in the shed, or garden. Nothing new needed to be invented; it was simply about noticing what was already there and making the least change for the greatest effect.
Spreading across sixteen locations, from Oberon to the Clarence Valley, neighbours have chosen a day of the month to bump into other permaculturists at their local. Since 2022, ‘Permaculture at the Pub’ has become the working title for something that is not a formal group or event, but an idea shared. Just as you might meet friends to watch the game on a Friday night, these casual meet-ups are about soil, seeds, and curiosity.
Like fruiting bodies of a broader mycelium network of people, knowledge, and curiosity, these meet-ups appear where conditions are right: interest, availability, timing. Some may be fleeting. Others recur again and again. They are small signals of a living system of relationships, ready to sprout wherever the network is nourished.
A typical get together looks like anywhere from half a dozen to twenty or more folk catching up over what they have been up to for the last month in their garden or in the community. The first Thursday of the month is when we began meeting up in our little village of Paterson.
Certain questions come up. When does the talk start? Who is presenting? Could there be tours, seed swaps, produce shares? All familiar impulses. All well-worn permaculture ground. These have been gently set aside. Not because those things aren’t valuable, but because each addition makes the door a little heavier to open.
Requiring little, the invitation is wide. You don’t need a garden. You don’t need to be growing food or designing systems. You can arrive curious, unsure, or just wanting to see who else nearby might be thinking along similar lines. The point isn’t instruction. This space asks not for the bravado of expertise, but for the quiet care to connect. When the same rain falls on everyone at the table, the conversation tends to stay grounded in what is common.
The word “pub” can carry certain connotations, so it’s worth clarifying that alcohol is not the focus, nor will a pub setting suit everyone. In the original sense of “public house,” what matters is the idea of shared civic space. In rural towns, pubs often serve many roles: they are the local restaurant, playground, bottle shop, book club, and community hub all in one. Families can attend without needing separate childcare, and for many communities on the land, the pub is a practical venue. Some have chosen different venues or formats, and time of day, setting, and tone are all locally adaptable.
Much has been written about social systems as plainly as ecological ones. This approach grows from Mollison’s teachings about resilience arising from density of connection rather than control. Landscapes don’t hold together because they’re instructed to. Communities don’t either.
One of the most encouraging aspects has been seeing Permaculture Design Certificate students take this idea and quietly run with it. After the intensity of a PDC, there’s often a gap between finishing a course and embedding practice into daily life. These informal, recurring meet-ups have become a way for students and graduates to stay connected without creating hierarchy or obligation.
These gatherings are small gestures against the drift of disconnection, against the tendency to lose touch with the land and one another. Conversation moves between gardens and towns, knowledge passes sideways, and trust settles into the spaces people share. It is here, in the ordinary rhythm of returning to a shared table, that community grows, not through planning or instruction, but through the consistent work of connection.
Maplewood Permaculture are lead teachers on the Permaculture Design and Homesteading Certificate Course held twice-yearly in collaboration with Limestone Permaculture, in addition to providing permaculture design and consultation services.
We understand Permaculture as being an ethical & principled ‘Whole-of-Life’ framework, a regenerative design science and a way of seeing land, people and livelihoods as interconnected systems. Across the Hunter Region in NSW, this way of thinking is resonating strongly with small landholders who are seeking resilient, productive and meaningful relationships with their land. That interest has also been growing within our local & state government organisations like Councils, Landcare & Local Land Services!
Our latest collaboration is through the Permaculture Principled Small Farm Series, a new seven-workshop program hosted by Hunter Local Land Services and delivered by Limestone Permaculture, in partnership with Yeo Farm. Booked out within three weeks of opening workshop registrations, the series confirms what many of us in the permaculture movement already know: people are hungry for whole-system design knowledge grounded in real-world application.
A Permaculture Lens for Small Landholders
Small landholders are a vital and expanding part of Australia’s agricultural landscape. While their properties may be modest in scale, the cumulative impact of good or poor design is significant. Permaculture offers an ideal framework for this context, emphasising observation, thoughtful design, efficient use of resources, and the stacking of functions to achieve multiple outcomes from the same elements. This workshop series has permaculture as its backbone. It begins with core permaculture ethics, principles and the design process itself—supporting participants to move beyond isolated techniques and instead develop coherent, regenerative property plans. These foundations flow through every session, ensuring that practical skills are always linked back to whole-system thinking.
Learning across Scales, United by Design
Workshops alternate between two contrasting but complementary permaculture sites:
Limestone Permaculture, a one-acre demonstration homestead and micro-farm designed to show how intensive, diverse systems can thrive on small footprints
Yeo Farm, a 100-acre permaculture-designed Australian White sheep enterprise with integrated market garden exemplifies permaculture design at a larger agricultural scale.
By learning across these scales, participants see that permaculture principles remain consistent—whether designing a backyard food system or a broad-acre grazing landscape. What changes is the expression, not the ethics or logic.
From Principles to Practice
As the series progresses, permaculture design theory is translated into applied, site-based strategies, including:
Intro to Permaculture x2, an introduction to permaculture ethics, principles & the design process!
Building Climate Adaptation, focusing on improving drought, fire & flood resilience & responding to climate variability by highlighting water is life & trees protect life!
Practical Guide to Low Tech Earthworks, from using low-tech swales and contoured earthworks to slow, spread and store water while building soil carbon.
Insitu Compost Gardening for Soil Health & Cycled Production, focusing on in-situ composting and biological nutrient cycling within productive gardens.
Poultry Integration & Management, Integrating chickens, ducks and turkeys with trees, plants and structures for mutual health & welfare.
Espalier Orchard Systems – Integrated, Efficient & Multifunctional, combining fruit tree espalier + pest exclusion and vegetables in space-efficient, multifunctional designs suited to small properties
Each workshop reinforces the permaculture idea that elements are most successful when they are intentionally connected for mutual benefit. Programs like this demonstrate how permaculture can move confidently beyond the margins and into mainstream land management conversations, supporting both families and regions to thrive under increasing environmental pressure.
About Limestone Permaculture
Limestone Permaculture is a one-acre demonstration homestead located in the village of Stroud, NSW, designed and developed using permaculture design processes and principles. Our work centres on education, ethical land stewardship and empowering people to design regenerative systems that are productive, resilient and deeply connected to place. Limestone Permaculture currently collaborates at the local and state government level with a future goal to collaborate at the national level.
Thanks to generous donations to Permaculture Australia, Mlatho Farms and Agri-Learning Hub in Malawi was one of the organisations that received a Permafund grant in 2024.
Daniel Chibwe, the Founder and Managing Director of Mlatho Farms has sent us this update on their progress. We appreciate Daniel keeping us up to date, and heartened to hear of the opportunities that have arisen to take Mlatho Farms and Agri-Learning Hub from strength to strength during this year.
“I hope this message finds you well. I am writing to sincerely thank you and to provide an update on the growth and impact of Mlatho Farms and Agri-Learning Hub following the USD 1,300 Permafund 24 support we received in 2024.
Since that support, our journey has accelerated significantly: In 2025, USD500 from the Aspire Leaders Program and USD5,000 has been received from the Tony Elumelu Foundation,strengthening our institutional capacity and confidence from global partners.
I’ve participated in the Young Leadership Incubation Program (YLIP) in South Africa under AHA International and SACAU, with three learning visits to Johannesburg, South Africa.
In January 2026, I will be traveling to Germany to attend the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture (GFFA) and the Young Farmers Forum (YFF). I have already secured a visa and am fully sponsored by the Federal Government of Germany through the Ministry of Agriculture, joining 20 young farmers selected globally.
Beyond travel and leadership exposure, our work has gained strong visibility. This year alone, Mlatho Farms has been featured twice in national newspapers and several times on local and national radio and television, sharing our story of permaculture, youth empowerment, and climate resilience in Malawi.
I genuinely believe that these recognitions and opportunities were ignited by the Permafund 24 support.
You truly lit the candle that opened doors to networks, platforms and trust at a global level. Without that early belief, much of this progress would not have been possible.
As our organisation continues to grow, we are now better structured, more visible and increasingly capable of handling larger responsibilities and partnerships. Should there be future opportunities, collaborations, or advanced funding windows, we would be deeply honored to be considered.
Thank you once again for believing in grassroots permaculture initiatives from Africa. Your support is creating ripple effects far beyond what can be measured in numbers.”
The Permafund grants program, with 103 creative community projects worldwide supported so far, has seen many examples of the multiplier effect of donations, where a small amount of seed funding for an environmental restoration and permaculture education project has produced a positive result in one grant location to then be replicated by others through the inter-community network and has encouraged professional development among community leaders.
Donations to support environmental projects and environmental organisations in Australia and overseas are tax deductible in Australia and can be made here.
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