Permaculture Design Course (PDC)

Joel Meadows is an educator, designer, builder, illustrator, sculptor, grower and musician. Joel runs The Green Hand Institute offering permaculture education and developing technologies that make living sustainably more achievable: think rocket stoves, innovative beehives, human-powered transport, biochar makers and more. He has illustrated two books: David Holmgren’s ‘Principles’ and ‘The Rocket Powered Oven’ with Tim Barker. Joel lives with his family on the fringe of Castlemaine in their owner designed and built passive solar straw bale home(which we are lucky enough to visit in the course).

Kat Lavers is a small space food gardening specialist with a background in permaculture design, teaching and facilitation. She has a breadth of training experience working with residents and local government as well as refugee communities, aid agency staff and even Mongolian nomadic herders. Her award-winning house and garden, ‘The Plummery’, is a 1/14th acre urban permaculture system that produces almost all the vegies, herbs, fruit and eggs consumed (more than 450kg in 2020), as well as recycling all organic waste on site and harvesting the majority of power and water used by the household. When she’s not teaching permaculture and organic gardening, Kat designs community gardens and urban agriculture projects with local councils and communities.

Beck Lowe worked closely with David Holmgren on RetroSuburbia as chief editor, researcher and project manager. Since publication, she has also taken on the role of education coordinator and has run workshops and developed resources to help households make positive changes. She is an enthusiastic and experienced permaculture educator and has been involved in permaculture training at all levels for more than 15 years. She has practical permaculture experience in private and community spaces in inner city, urban and rural areas.

Adam Grubb is the co-founder with late great Dan Palmer of the permablitz volunteer backyard makeover network and the business Very Edible Gardens, where he continues to design and build permaculture inspired gardens. He’s a Triple R alumni as host of Greening the Apocalypse for many years and is the co-author with Annie Raser-Rowland of The Weed Forager’s Handbook and The Art of Frugal Hedonism and the kids’ book Let’s Eat Weeds.