Fiona Blackham, Tim Darby, Shani Graham, Martina Hoeppner and Marina Grayden.
Permaculture Australia is the national permaculture member based organsiation and we are run nearly entirely by volunteers. This includes skilled and experienced team members working in education, Permafund, fundraising and social media.
To celebrate National Volunteer week, we are putting the spotlight on a number of our wonderful volunteers. Today we are featuring Education team member Fiona Blackham.
After working in the oil and gas industry as a project manager for quite some years, Fiona Blackham started her landscape and gardening business Gaia Gardening in 2010. While she loved being outside and dealing with clients, she quickly realised how unsustainable the industry was. Badly designed gardens often led to more work for her or the necessity of using chemicals. In 2012 she attended a PDC with Ross Mars and found the solution to her growing concerns: A sustainable way to design gardens that work, don’t need massive amounts of maintenance and produce yields without chemical inputs.
Eight years down the track, Fiona has completed two permaculture teaching courses, a Certificate IV and a Diploma in Permaculture. After almost ten years on the tools, she has given up on gardening but not on the business. Now called Gaia Permaculture, her work is split between designing, consulting and teaching. Fiona educates at council workshops, Permaculture Intros and in the accredited system. She taught Certificate I at Rockingham Senior High School and Certificate III and IV at Candlelight Farm, taking over from Ross Mars. She is co-founder of the Permaculture Educator’s Alliance, where she teaches Permaculture Design Certificate Courses with Marina Grayden and Martina Hoeppner.
A *huge* thank you to all of our wonderful volunteers who keep Permaculture Australia running, we couldn’t do it without you.
Want to get more involved and help us advocate for permaculture solutions too? Don’t forget to sign up as a member here to get involved. We’d love to have you join us.