Who does he think he is?

a bit about me and warm welcome to new subscribers!

Who the hell do you think you are?

A Permaculture engineer first and foremost, a Permaculture teacher as well.

Why did you get into Permaculture?

A friend gave me a copy of ‘Permaculture news’ and then I got the Designers manual out from the local library. I found myself faced with someone, Mollison, who had written down and systematised everything that I was doing or believed in. Bit of a shock in some ways but a good one, I later discovered that for a lot of my peers it was the same thing. We especially like the way that Mollison presented Permaculture :

"The first time I saw a review of one of my permaculture books was three years after I first started writing on it. The review started with, "Permaculture Two is a seditious book." And I said, "At last someone understands what permaculture's about."" ~ Bill Mollison

"The tragic reality is that very few sustainable systems are designed or applied by those who hold power, and the reason for this is obvious and simple: to let people arrange their own food, energy and shelter is to lose economic and political control over them. We should cease to look to power structures, hierarchical systems, or governments to help us, and devise ways to help ourselves." ~ Bill Mollison

Wonderful stuff that we fitted totally with who we were and what we were already doing.

What path did you take then?

I did a PDC in 1990 at Chris Dixon’s (he writes some good articles on Substack) place in Wales.

After my PDC I headed back to south-east London and got busy setting up a design and build business with a friend to earn some money and get some experience. We called it ‘Durable designs’ wasn’t that sweet :-)

Thanks to Pooran Desai we went along to meet some people just down the road who had also done PDC’s and were setting up a local group. They were great and were happy to have me and Matt as additional members. The group was called the South-east London Permaculture group which got abbreviated to SELP. We got on with loads of stuff, growing food, setting up a Local exchange trading system, a bulk buying Coop. We linked up with a local organic farm who delivered fruit and veg which we used as a type of ‘veg box scheme’. Different businesses got set up, the group got pretty big and we had a lot of fun. I went and got the Diploma in applied Permaculture in 1992 in order that there be someone in the group qualified to teach PDC courses.

The incredibly rare Tshirt of the legendary SELP

So you got a lot of experience with urban Permaculture but what about the rural part?

I got asked to manage a farm in Kent and I accepted in order to produce fruit and veg for the box scheme and also so that people in SELP could have access to the countryside. I ran the office of the UK Permaculture association for a bit which was valueable because I learnt lessons that I later apllied in France.

Similar question: did you feel the need to get experience of different climates and cultures?

Yes I did, the PDC syllabus includes tropical, arid and semi-arid climates. I headed to Zimbabwe to study on a Permaculture project there, it was great. Except when I got back I found a colony of mice in my mobile home who had spent the time gnawing my clothes and bedding. A small price to pay I suppose.

Why did you move to France?

The farm project started to go a bit fruit shaped as the owner got other people involved that I didn’t get on with so I left. In 1999 my Breton partner, me and our 2 very young children headed to Brittany to convert a stone barn into a house and develop a smallholding.

Was Permaculture well known in France?

I had a look around France and Permaculture was little known or talked about. The Darlington’s and Emilie Hazelip had run a couple of PDC’s in France in the 1980’s but everything needed a boost.

So what did you do?

I started running PDC’s and then Pascal Depienne set up a national group called Brin de Paille and I was a founder member. The next year I set up the Université Populaire de Permaculture in order to promote courses aimed at training up Permaculture designers. I also worked up a design for the evolution of Permaculture in France. The main thrust of this was to train as many people as possible so that each local area in France would have an experienced designer to hand to help with the socio-economic transition that we badly needed and still do.

What are you doing now?

I’m now based in the Ardèche part of France running a 7 hectare micro-farm. We produce chestnut cream, chestnut flour, fruit and veg. We run courses and have a small theatre which has hosted dozens of concerts, conferences and shows. We also set up a small restaurant, my objective here was to produce in the gardens and sell to the restaurant. In particlular to propose dishes made from things that people don’t generally eat, edible wild plants for example. It worked pretty well.

There’s loads more but it would take me ages to talk about it all!

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What other experiences have you had?

I’ve worked as a designer on a lot of projects around the world, mainly in the French speaking parts. I’ve led over 150 PDC’s all over Europe, in Africa and a bunch of other places. I stopped flying a few years ago for two reasons, one because of the pollution and two because there were more and more people qualified and working in the countries I had been working in. They didn’t need me and this was what I had hoped would happen and had been working towards.

This brings up a point that has always annoyed me. People wafting around the planet to teach PDC’s in countries where there are already qualified, experienced Permaculture designer/teachers. Even more annoying is that they don’t contact the local Permaculture networks before rushing in. This wasn’t, isn’t how I decided to do things, I get an invite and then I’ll make sure that the local Permaculture designers, if any, are happy for me to come and see a need for my contribution. If not I stay at home.

I got invited to Tunisia a few years ago and it didn’t take me long to discover that there was a thriving Permaculture network there. I got in touch with them and they checked out who I was and what I could contribute, they gave a thumbs up so I felt ethically OK to travel over.

You’ve written three books in French about Permaculture, why?

Frankly I’ve got no idea! Except to say that the books that had been published in French were far too lightweight and gardening based for my taste and I thought I could do better. I’m not going to write another one, it’s really time consuming.

A pretty classic question but : what are you most proud of? Apart from your children of course!

In France Permaculture is now widely known and we have managed to effectively promote the fact that Permaculture isn’t just about gardening. One of the things that I’m quite proud of is that I’m virtually unknown over here. This is deliberate, I didn’t want to become, nor for there to be, some sort of Permaculture superstar in the France.

Recently I was taken on by an NGO that is part of the United Nations to run 2 PDCs in Guinea. I’m pretty chuffed with how this went. I sat in my vardo and, with a video-conference thing, I taught people in four different centres in Guinea. The students were qualified agronomists which I didn’t know when I started teaching! The course turned out to be more a Masterclass than a PDC. The same NGO got me to write a Workbook to be used in agricultural colleges in the counry.

I recently got asked to do some design work and teaching in the Congo, I don’t need to! One of the students in Guinea, who already had a Phd in agronomy is ready, able and willing to take it on. Yes! Job done :-) Here’s me feeling well proud!

You’ve been in this game for a long time now, what’s next?

For the first time in my life I’m owner of a piece of land, it feels a bit strange to be ‘an owner’ but I got 9000 m2 to have a fiddle with.

Apart from that I’m involved with a couple of very big, ambitious transnational projects. These are in their early days and I’d rather talk about them another time ;-) I would say ‘watch this space’ but that’s always seemed a strange expression unless you’re into meditation.

As a final question what personal things do you feel you need to work on, do you have any weak points?

I get bored very easily which is probably why I’ve stuck with Permaculture design as it tends to be a new thing each day.

I struggle to understand humanity and I fully agree with Mollison :

"Though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple." ~ Bill Mollison

I can’t get my head around art!

No, I’m sorry but I can’t stop without asking you what the hell is the first photo about!

Every element has more than one function as we say.

I’ve always used humour to get serious messages across. I’ve always wanted to present Permaculture to as many people as possible and most especially to those people who wouldn’t necessarily do a PDC not go to a conference. I wanted to take it to where they live.

The easiest way seemed to be to mix a conference with a show. I worked with a friend who was a theatre clown and we came up with the show ‘Conciliabule’. It was basically me trying to give a conference and her trying to ‘help’. I played a sort of lofty person a bit full of himself. Little by little I came to understand that the concierge, (the clown played by Chloé Decaux) who was sweeping the stage when I arrive late, knew loads of stuff and had lots of concrete examples from her neighbourhood in Marseille.

We did 3 tours with the show going to village halls and suchlike; it was tiring but great fun and quite effective.

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"It’s a revolution. But it’s the sort of revolution that no one will notice. It might get a little shadier. Buildings might function better. You might have less money to earn because your food is all around you and you don’t have any energy costs. Giant amounts of money might be freed up in society so that we can provide for ourselves better. So it’s a revolution. But permaculture is anti-political. There is no room for politicians or administrators or priests. And there are no laws either. The only ethics we obey are: care of the earth, care of people, and reinvestment in those ends." ~ Bill Mollison