his summer, I was lucky enough to spend some lovely days with wonderful, inspiring people at the Nordic Permaculture Festival – my first permaculture event outside the UK. I had just moved to Denmark and I was extremely pleased to discover that the festival was going to be held in the country – what luck. l could not have been happier – this was one of the first and most important steps towards me starting a new life here.

Re-starting my permaculture journey

At the festival I met my soon to be Diploma teacher, Cathrine Dolleris, which was one of the reasons I had been so keen to get to the event; I’d made a clear decision to do my diploma and knew this would be a pivotal moment for me in regard to making the contacts I would need to re-start my permaculture journey. Cathrine’s profile was a perfect match – the universe was, once again, conspiring to help me.

Towards the end of the festival I found myself in a workshop where it was mentioned that there were still places available through Erasmus+ to shadow a PDC in the UK with Aranya, and since my plan was to become a permaculture teacher everything worked out in my favour.

Aranya

I had heard good things about Aranya  even before I’d met him at the IPC in London in 2015. The friend of mine who first introduced me to permaculture, had done her PDC with him and raved about it, and like many, myself included, she seemed to want to download his brain and keep copy of it it in her pocket, handy at all times – like a magic permaculture 8 ball but with wikipedia style answers. I’m pleased he writes books.

So after no more than a few days, I was on my way back to my new home, with a new Diploma teacher in hand, many new friends, lots of inspiration and a new plan for the future, one that Erasmus+ was making possible.

Summer being over and autumn descending, I arrived in the UK for the PDC.