 We're at the High Headercombe Centre on the edge of beautiful Dartmoor in Devon, and we're here running a permaculture design course. Okay, so what is permaculture? It's one of those questions that will elicit many different answers from different people. To me, it's an ecological design system which we can apply to all of our human habitats. What the course is about is about giving people a toolkit with which to apply the principles of permaculture to every part of their life. I think I had some preconceptions about what the experience would be like and I'm happy to report that it was way fuller and way bigger and way more rewarding than I hoped. Oh, it's amazing to be here. The silence and hearing just the birds and being just right inside of the nature is just a beautiful experience. I really love it in here. Oh, it's been wonderful. It's been such a roller coaster of a journey and watching how each individual brings something totally different to the course, to the group work. It's been wonderful. Soil day is the first day where you get to go outside and really get your hands on nature. So looking at the soil structure and seeing how to take soil samples, I can't wait to get home and have a look at what I've got in the garden. I think one of the biggest things that I've learned over the last few weeks is the process of design and the planning and stages in particular. I felt like before I had lots of ideas that I could implement in various different ways but never really knew how to go about doing that. Many of us who are attracted to permaculture come here because we're wanting to make positive changes in our life to be more green and so on. But we don't always know how we get from here to there. Permaculture helps us to do that in a way that's more in line with nature's processes, more sustainable. And so we spent a lot of time observing, finding out what's going on. We derive a set of principles from nature and we use those to help us to make the right decisions. In the near future I will use the people care tools we have been given to use and in the long term I'm hoping to find my own spot and have a proper culture garden. I think going home, I'm going to remember just how valuable it is to get together and be created with others. There is a lot of permaculture that I'm going to introduce into my life but starting from my allotment. I think I came here assuming that this was going to be a lot about growing things and didn't realise how much it was going to be about growing myself and growing people. I think that a lot of people come into an environment with an expectation and this course has overwhelmed me with opportunities and tools to move forward.