Main Tutors

  • Mel is an independent environmental advocate and educator who works to preserve the natural environment, particularly across Te Tau Ihu where she resides. Under ‘Para Kore’, she worked with Marae to reduce waste-to-landfill, create compost, and “close the loop”. She now works under the potae of Tasman Bay Guardians, covering all facets of freshwater monitoring. As a fierce advocate for water and land restoration, Mel expresses tribute to =her Taua and ancestral lineage, as uri of Kai tahu, Kati māmoe and Waitaha. Her collaborative delivery style endeavours to ensure that science, cultural values and the principles of kaitiakitanga are entwined.

  • Rosie is our admin. superstar this year and will be your first point-of-contact.

    With a Masters in Biology (Plant Sciences), Rosie returned to their love of plants in 2020 becoming involved in various Community Supported Agriculture project in the UK. In Golden Bay they managed the Sustainable Living Centre for 3 years before embarking on their Counselling Degree.

    They are working to turn a small property into a quarter-acre-paradise with their partner with Permaculture Principles; whilst also applying Social Permaculture by being on the Board of Trustees of both Wangapeka Education Trust and Centre for the Great Turning.

  • Sol runs his own organic garden and permaculture design advisory and hands-on business called GroWise Consultancy. He graduated with a BAg(Hons) from Lincoln specialising in biological husbandry, and began Koanga Seeds with Kaye Baxter In 1994. Moving to the Te Tauihu Region he was Co-ordinator of Waimarama Community Gardens, in Whakatu, followed by Golden Bay Community Gardens in Mohua in the 90’s, and has been an integral part of the renamed Sustainable Living Centre there ever since. Sol has shaped the landscapes of many minds and gardens in the region. With a universe of knowledge in one brain, its unavoidable that your mind will be expanded with his teachings.

  • Ingrid is a gardener and farmer at heart. She did an apprenticeship at a Benedictine Convent in Austria - a self sufficient garden, staple cropping broadacre, orchard, dairy, and animal farm raising with chickens and pigs. Subsequently she trained in animal husbandry and operating and maintaining farm machinery. When life took her to New Zealand with the dream of owning land, she further learned through working as a farmhand on a beef, sheep and cropping farm in Fairlie, followed by a beef and goat farm in the Baton Valley, Tasman region. Together with her partner Tom, she developing their current farm ( 1.7ha) from a commercial kiwifruit orchard and ex tobacco paddock into a rich organic edible landscape, nourishing people, nature and all its critters.

  • Ami lives in Whakatū and works with The Germinate Collective, Nelson Seed Library, and Whakatū Te Korowai Manaakitanga Trust. She has always been curious about this planet and how humans can live as positive, active contributors within it. Caring for the earth, growing food, and sharing harvests with others, to her feels fundamental to a healthy and connected life. Her life journey has taken her from living on a rural commune to training as a chef and school teacher, to studying organic growing and permaculture through Christchurch Polytec. Together with colleague Lily White, she created The Germinate Workbook, a substantial practical guide for beginner gardeners.

  • Chris is an osteopath by profession, and a permaculture property manager by lifestyle. Just after he and his partner Sylvia, purchased their Golden Bay property (in the ‘90s), they attended a Permaculture Design Course. There, with tutor guidance, they designed their new property in detail, then implemented their design over time - with active feedback from the landscape! Their sloping, gravity-fed, subtropical property features multiple microclimates, an extensive food forest, timber forestry, native plants revegetation, vege gardens, an abundance of on-site composting/mulch materials, greywater recycling, and a solar/wood-fire heated home.

  • Charley fosters regenerative, community-driven solutions that promote personal and ecological well-being, helping individuals and bioregions thrive in a time of challenge and transformation. He is our ‘wraparound’ tutor; able to teach both the practical skills whilst able to really hold the group with his kind and cheerful manner, applying his learnings from Compassionate Communication (NVC), Sociocracy, and Restorative Justice, to Social Permaculture. Charley has expertise in carpentry, construction, stone cottage restoration, boat building, gardening and horticultural land development. Having transformed properties in the Azores, England and now Aotearoa, he brings many useful perspectives and skills to the application of permaculture.

  • Robina is the founder of the Institute of Earthcare Education Aotearoa, co-founder of Tui Land Trust & Community in Golden Bay, NZ and pioneer ofthe S.E.E.D (Schools Environmental Education & Development) programme in South Africa and Brazil. She has been a community development and permaculture educator for over 30 years, evolving her own methodology and original resource materials and applying her powerful community-building methods to households, neighborhoods, schools, farms, ecovillages and bioregions. She was the co-ordinator of Victory Community Gardens in Nelson and consultant-educator (post-earthquake) with Project Lyttleton's 'Food Resilience Project'. In 2012 she founded 'The Localising Food Project', producing motivational documentaries and teaching workshops on home garden design, public food forests, seed security and local food action planning, up until today.

  • Peter left a career in software development to pursue a dream lifestyle in Golden Bay. Together with his partner Malena, they are developing their lifestyle block into a beautiful and productive permaculture food forest. Dealing with both drought and major storm events, Peter now considers water management a core strategy for a thriving and resilient property. Over the past 7 years, Peter has built his knowledge and expertise in water harvesting, storage, and irrigation, as well as flood mitigation, and now offers this expertise through his business Appropriate Technology Golden Bay. He has even built his own successful hydraulic ram pump.

  • Che is a 3rd generation member of Riverside Community, an 85 year old intentional and income sharing community. His knowledge base and systems understanding is informed by his utopian childhood, living on this farm-community, with all its practicality and freedom. Since childhood he has been working with a wide range of plants - forestry, fruit trees, ornamentals, succulents, and even bonsai. He is also an artist and designer with a deep interest in all living things, and the complexity of their relationships. He is currently undertaking an extensive native regeneration program at Riverside with 25000 trees under his care. "What do you do when you realise that everything you’ve done is the problem? You plant trees!”

  • Shannon has been passionate about nature for as long as she can remember. She spent much of her childhood exploring lakes and rivers throughout South America, especially in Patagonia, where she is from. This passion led her to become a freshwater ecologist. Throughout her career she has worked on environmental projects at the catchment scale, contributing to the protection, restoration, and long-term stewardship of freshwater and native forest ecosystems. After settling in NZ, Shannon worked Environment Canterbury and Tasman Environmental Trust. She is currently collaborating with the Marahau Pledge and Tasman Bay Guardians. 

  • Initially Yuri was immersed in the IT industry, together with the consumerism and electronic waste it entailed. When he encountered Permaculture, he completely changed what he did and who he was. It was Permaculture's ability to bridge ethics, embody indigenous wisdom, provide sound scientific understanding and apply practical principles, that motivated him to become a Professional Permaculture Designer. Yuri has a passion for helping people transform their backyards into productive, resilient, and beautiful food-producing havens, and for shaping communities, landscapes and our ourselves. "Every garden has the potential to become a small act of regeneration. Seeing soil come alive again, wildlife return, and people reconnect with the source of their food continues to inspire me. For me, Permaculture is not simply a design system, it is a way of thinking, living and nurturing hope for the future".

  • Reinhold has a background in fine woodworking and appropriate technology - evident when exploring his and Judith’s property. They live quite a self-reliant lifestyle, with plenty of home food processing, beautiful vegetable gardens, chickens, a greenhouse growing exotic species, orchards in appropriately selected microclimates, and areas of regenerating native forest. Renewable energy systems are used for water and electricity generation. The timber used in all their hand-built structures is harvested from the mixed species plantation forest on their land, and milled by Raimund on-site. Besides providing timber for their own needs, he runs a timber-milling and firewood business for others.