Wild & Kind Wednesdays July 2026

Lineup

• More details about Morag Gamble: Host

  Morag Gamble: Host

  Morag Gamble is the Founder and Director of the Permaculture Education Institute teaching permaculture educators, designers and catalysts on six continents - primarily through the comprehensive online Permaculture Educators Program with Morag as mentor. She has lived for more than quarter of a century in an award-winning ecovillage and has taught at leading ecological learning centres around the world, such as Schumacher College. She is also a co-founder of the urban permaculture centre, Northey Street City Farm. Morag is curator and host of the International Festival of Wild and Kind Ideas. She creates the Sense-Making in a Changing World Podcast, and the Our Permaculture Life BLOG and YouTube - collectively viewed millions of times. She is also the Director of Ethos Foundation - a registered charity offering free permaculture education for particularly women and youth in places of need, including refugees and displaced peoples in Uganda and Kenya. She works closely with leading systems thinker/educator/writer, Fritjof Capra, collaborates with the Ecocivilization Coalition and Deep Transformation Netowk, is an advisor to the Melbourne Pollinator Corridor and the Institute for Deep Ecology

  • Morag Gamble: Host's website
  • Morag Gamble: Host's instagram
  • Morag Gamble: Host's website
  • Morag Gamble: Host's linkedin
  • Morag Gamble: Host's facebook
  • Morag Gamble: Host's spotify
• More details about Buttons Mira (29 July)

  Buttons Mira (29 July)

  Coming out this month is Button's book - The Mushroomery - The Mushroomery is an ode to the joys of growing fungi. It features at-home projects for growing and cultivating different varieties of mushrooms. Each project has an introduction, step-by-step instructions, accompanied by photography, and lots of tips, tricks and troubleshooting. The second half of the book features 20+ mushroom-forward dishes including recipes for pickling and drying mushrooms for preservation and to enhance their flavour. Buttons Mira found her way on a journey through the wonderful and mysterious world of fungi when she started trying to grow a self-sufficient veggie garden. She had grown all manner of different types of veggies but realized she was missing one of her all time kitchen favourites – mushrooms! So she set out trying to learn how to grow them. Little did she know that it would take her years to learn how to grow mushrooms, and how many different varieties and types of mushrooms are in existence. It was to be an eye-opening adventure – with mushrooms of all different flavors and colours of the rainbow. She was hooked. Once she had learned the basics of growing, she wanted to make these new varieties and colours accessible to the wider community. She was also inspired to spread the knowledge of how mushrooms grow and what wonderful benefits they can have for yours and the environments health. Fungi is on the precipice of solving many earthly problems from waste to health. Buttons set out to create her first micro farm in her Brunswick backyard – a 10 square meter growing space. Over the next year and a half she grew thousands of mushrooms which she supplied to local restaurants. She wanted to show how much food can be grown on small marginal plots of land in the inner city. She hopes that by farming in urban areas her farm will be a visible place where people can learn more and that she can contribute to bridging the gap between rural and urban areas. Source: https://smithstreetbooks.com/catalogue/the-mushroomery/

  • Buttons Mira (29 July)'s website
  • Buttons Mira (29 July)'s website
  • Buttons Mira (29 July)'s instagram
• More details about Looby Macnamara (1 July)

  Looby Macnamara (1 July)

  Looby Macnamara is an inspirational author, designer, gardener, song leader, mother, and artist. Her pioneering methodology and teachings have spread globally and supported thousands of people Looby runs Applewood Permaculture Centre,, with her partner Chris Evans, where they run courses and demonstrate both land and people permaculture, both online and in person at their stunning 20 acre smallholding in Herefordshire, UK. She is the author of five international best-selling books; People & Permaculture, Design Adventures, 7 Ways to Think Differently, Cultural Emergence, and Strands of Infinity. She has been teaching permaculture, Cultural Emergence and teacher trainings for over 20 years. Looby wrote the first book globally to translate permaculture to people. Looby created the Design Web - an organic dynamic design framework which has been used to create thousands of designs around the world on many scales. Looby co-created the Cultural Emergence toolkit with Jon Young, which is growing into a global movement of people ready to make positive change in their own lives and communities. Cultural Emergence brings together innovative models for behavioral and cultural change, weaving together systems thinking, cultural awareness, design, and nature connection. Looby also created the beautiful CEED - Cultural Emergence Empowerment & Design deck. Looby runs the online Cultural Emergence community bringing together a global network of change-makers and designers using these tools. Four books published by Permanent Publications - People and Permaculture - Cultural Emergence & Empowerment and Design Deck - 7 Ways to Think Differently - Design Adventures She has also created the Mother Nature Guidebook and Card Deck

  • Looby Macnamara (1 July)'s website
  • Looby Macnamara (1 July)'s website
• More details about Afshan Omar (8 July)

  Afshan Omar (8 July)

  Afshan Omar is a certified permaculture designer whose work in Malawi demonstrates, with quiet precision, what it looks like to place ecological design at the heart of human health. Working with the Baylor College of Medicine and Malawi’s Ministry of Health, she transformed the Area 25 Health Center in Lilongwe into a thriving five-hectare oasis of nutrition, biodiversity, and community resilience — where expectant mothers receive daily harvests of fresh vegetables, eggs, fruit, and legumes grown right alongside the maternity ward. Her design integrates guilds, zones, container gardens, tree nurseries, animals, and fuel-efficient cooking into a living system that makes visible permaculture’s deepest truth: human health and ecological health are inseparable. Afshan’s work is proof that solutions exist, that they are elegant, and that they are already growing. From Never Ending Food: "An incredible Permaculture treasure is hidden away in the heart of Area 25 in Lilongwe, Malawi. This Health Center is a result of the combined efforts of the Baylor College of Medicine (Texas Children’s Hospital), and Malawi’s Ministry of Health. Certified Permaculture Designer, Afshan Omar, has put several years of hard work into creating an oasis of nutrition, resilience, and sustainability. The plot is about 5 hectares in size and being used to demonstrate the links between human and environmental health. They have also developed a community center within the healthcare facility where community members can learn about Permaculture techniques such as good soil and water management practices, intercropping in guilds, using zones, and learning about the roles of different components of healthy ecosystems".....Read the whole article in the link https://neverendingfood.org/interview-with-afshan-omar/

  • Afshan Omar (8 July)'s website
  • Afshan Omar (8 July)'s linkedin
• More details about Pippa Chapman (15 July)

  Pippa Chapman (15 July)

  Pippa is a professional RHS trained horticulturalist, permaculture practitioner and teacher who has been gardening for over 30 years. In 2007 she left her job as Head Gardener on a private estate, to take a year-long practical apprenticeship at RHS Harlow Carr. She was introduced to forest gardening and permaculture and in 2010 set up a sustainable gardening business with her husband - Those Plant People She grows a wide variety of fruits, flowers, herbs and annual and perennial vegetables in her small backyard, creating a beautiful, edible and wildlife friendly space. She experiments with polycultures and guilds at her smallholding in West Yorkshire whilst working as an organic gardener and consultant. Pippa has a real love of food forests and has developed a food forest design workbook. She is also the author of The Plant Lover's Backyard Forest Garden (2022) and Permaculture Planting Designs: a handbook for creating a thriving abundant garden(2026) - both published by Permanent Publications

  • Pippa Chapman (15 July)'s website
  • Pippa Chapman (15 July)'s website
• More details about John Seed (22 July)

  John Seed (22 July)

  John Seed is the founder of the Rainforest Information Centre and has dedicated his life to the protection of rainforests and their biodiversity since 1979. In 1995 he was awarded the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) by the Australian Government for services to conservation and the environment. He has written and lectured extensively on deep ecology and has been conducting Councils of All Beings and other re-Earth ing workshops around the world for 25 years. In the US, his workshops have been hosted by Esalen, Omega, Naropa and the California Institute of Integral Studies. In 2003 he spearheaded RIC's endangered species campaign and made the film "On The Brink" with David Attenborough, David Suzuki, Olivia Newton-John and Jack Thompson. John co-authored “Thinking Like a Mountain – Towards a Council of All Beings” with Arne Naess, Joana Macy and Pat Fleming

  • John Seed (22 July)'s website
• More details about Erika Aligno (22 July)

  Erika Aligno (22 July)

  My work sits at the intersection of activism, social justice, and ecological (re)awakening. Originally trained in commercial litigation, I later moved into advocacy and communications roles with community legal centres, supporting people navigating systems not built for them. I volunteered as a lawyer with Redfern Legal Centre providing free legal advice and worked with Inner City Legal Centre as their communications advocate during pivotal moments incl. the 2017 marriage equality campaign and the establishment of Australia’s first free Transgender Legal Service in 2018. During this time, I worked and spoke alongside Hon. Justice Michael Kirby (Australian High Court Judge and international jurist) and Hon. Chief Justice Lucy McCallum. Alongside this work, I spent several years as an international conference producer, travelling across Australia, the USA, and South Africa. Yet, throughout this time, there were what David Whyte calls “questions that have no right to go away,” and for me, there was one question that would not leave me; a quiet whisper of my heart: how can I live a life of meaning and purpose? In 2019-20, after the dystopian-like Australia’s bushfires where I saw blue skies turn red days on end and the death of some 1.25 billion animal kin, something in me shifted. I turned my attention toward biodiversity conservation and took on a role within the NSW Government environment sector. In 2023, I began my Master of Environmental Management at UNSW. That same year, I was offered a role as a casual teaching assistant. It was through UNSW that a visionary Professor, Tema Milstein, a leader in ecocultural communication and transformation, invited and introduced me to a Deep Ecology workshop at Narara Ecovillage. It was the first time I came across the work of Deep Ecology and John Seed - and I feel deep gratitude for what felt like an invitation from life itself to step into co-creation and participation with Gaia. It was sitting in the Truth Mandala for the first time that I experienced what I would describe as my awakening. And the quiet whisper of my heart grew louder, and the questions of belonging, ecological longing, and a search for deeper meaning became hard to ignore. I often describe this period as the moment I “stopped sleepwalking through my life.” Three months later, I would co-facilitate my first Deep Ecology workshop. A year later in 2024, I immersed myself in a 10-day Vipassana silent meditation. Professor Arne Naes had one definition of Deep Ecology: It was to ask deeper questions. The quiet whisper of my heart led me into deeper inquiry. The question was no longer simply, 'how can I live a life of meaning and purpose', it reached beyond that, becoming deeper and more expansive, “how can I live a life of meaning and purpose in a time of spiritual, social, and ecological crisis?” Since then, I’ve continued to reorient myself toward ‘answering’ that question that would not go away; I began to peel back the layers of coping and conditioning shaped by a dominant culture that prioritises economics over nature – industrial growth over life sustaining. Later that year, I travelled to Colombia and undertook plant medicine and womb healing ceremony. For the past 3 years, I have worked closely with John Seed, attending over 20 workshops and facilitating a dozen of those. I now serve as a Director of the Institute for Deep Ecology. I have co-facilitated Deep Ecology workshops and immersive group processes across Sydney, Hobart, Perth, and soon-to-be in USA, supporting participants to reconnect with Earth, each other, and their wider ecological identity. I’ve also been an active organiser with Rising Tide (a people-led movement to stop the largest coal port in the world) and, more recently, focused on ending native forest logging with Bob Brown Foundation and forest protection with Rainforest Information Centre.