I have been fascinated by permaculture ever since I first heard about in in 2010. I was studying design at art school at that time, and I was frustrated. I felt that there was something missing in the design methodology that we were being taught. During the summer holidays, I stumbled across an Introduction to Permaculture session at a festival, and I was so excited to learn about a design methodology that incorporated the whole natural world, and not just humans. I was keen to learn more, so the next summer, I did a two week ‘Earth Activist Training’, exploring activism, spirituality, and permaculture, run by Starhawk and Andy Goldring. This experience blew my mind and permanently shifted something in my relationship with the natural world. In that short two weeks, we tasted something so rich and connected with nature. I had never experienced this before. I went back to my final year of art school quite bemused, I had had my world blown open, but I took me a long time to fully internalise the learnings and develop a new creative practice.
After graduating, I spent a year of trying to fit myself in to the design industry and feeling disconnected behind computers and post-it notes. I finally accepted that this wasn’t the right world for me and I went off to do an apprenticeship in horticulture and stick my hands in the soil. Through this time growing vegetables and learning about ecological growing techniques, I came to recognise that permaculture holds many pragmatic solutions to the complex problems we face in the climate and ecological crisis we live in. However, something still didn’t feel right. Despite having put myself physically closer to nature, there was something missing. I was seeking to connect with nature and yet, growing vegetables and herbs still felt like trying to control nature. I was not fully satisfied.
This has led me on to spend the past five years studying wild plants and developing my own nature connection practices around foraging for plant dyes, wild food, and medicine. Getting to know all the wild plants, trees, and fungi that live around us and how I can have a practical relationship with them. I have been inspired by learning from and about the most stable and sustainable cultures on the planet; egalitarian hunter gatherers. Partictularly the Ju’hoansi (the Bushmen) of the Kalahari. Learning about these peaceful people who live in the desert has given me hope that as humans, it is possible for live in balance and harmony with nature and also have a high quality of life. I do not seek to romanticise the past and I am not suggesting that we go back in time. I just seek to weave these learnings and practices in to my life in the modern world. To have a richer and more connected life being fully present in the natural world. Living in the UK, our indigenous lineage has been broken with the witch hunts, the clearances, and colonisation. So I have been on a journey of going back to learn from the land, as well as learning from wise people who are already doing this work. Such as The Seed Sisters, Rhizone Community Herbal, The Old Way, Fred Gillam, and Bruce Parry. I made friends with fellow foragers and we now gather in wild places throughout the seasons to share our learnings about plants and fungi together.
I am still gardening as well as foraging for seaweed, mushrooms, and plants. Deepening in to a seasonal life, living in the flow of the sun and the moon, while also being part of the modern world.