In this second episode of my January solo series, we talk about design. Not design as a glossy masterplan, not something fixed or expert only, but design as a responsive practice that is grounded in place and always in motion.

Permaculture begins with observation, with noticing, with curiosity. It asks how we can show up as kind humans in service of life, and how we can shape the places we live and work so they support comfort, health, resilience, belonging, and biodiversity.

I share a little story from my home in the ecovillage, including why I design to use less water even when it is available, and what it means to live as one species among many. We explore what “healthy human habitats” can really mean, and why most of the challenges we face sit right here in the everyday systems of human life.

If this work calls to you but you are not sure you know enough yet, I want you to hear this clearly. Permaculture design is learnable. You learn it by doing it, with good guidance, examples, and a community of practice.

This episode also includes a simple practice you can do this week: a slow walk through one place you move through every day, choosing one relationship that is calling for attention, and making one small change you can complete within a week.

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January 2026 offer
The Permaculture Educators Complete Collection is available from 7 to 31 January 2026. https://permacultureeducationinstitute.org/permaculture-educators-program

This once only bundle includes lifetime access to the Permaculture Educators Program, including the full Permaculture Design Certificate and Permaculture Teacher Certificate, plus bonus permaculture business modules. It also includes lifetime access to SHARE Permaculture and The Incredible Edible Garden, which are only available inside this Complete Collection. You’re also invited into our global learning community, The HIVE, for a year, so you’re held in a living community of practice while you learn and apply what you’re learning.

About Morag
Morag Gamble is the founder of the Permaculture Education Institute. Through her courses, films, and conversations, she supports people around the world to design for one plane

I'd love to hear from you. Text me here.

Support the show

_____________________________

Subscribe to this podcast, share widely, leave a comment and a 5 star review to help these stories myceliate far.

• Check out the Sense-Making in a Changing World podcast website & Youtube channel

This podcast is hosted by Morag Gamble, founder of the Permaculture Education Institute - the leading-edge international online school for integrated permaculture design, education, leadership and [pr]activism.⁠

• Save 50% on Morag Gamble's Permaculture Educators Complete Collection (available only 7-31 Jan, 2026)
• Talk with Morag here about this program.

Find more of Morag's conversations at the International Permaculture Festival of Wild Ideas.

This podcast is broadcast from a solar powered studio in the midst of a permaculture ecovillage on Jinibara & Gubbi Gubbi country.

🎧 Episode 1 – Why We Need Positive, Practical Permaculture

Many of us are carrying a quiet weight. We see what’s happening in the world and wonder what difference we can make. This episode is a gentle, hopeful invitation to come back to what’s real - place, people, food, community, meaning - and to rediscover the power of small, practical acts of care.

Morag Gamble shares how permaculture can move us from reacting to designing, from anxiety to agency, and from isolation to connection. You’ll hear simple, life-centred ways to create pockets of ease, beauty, and regeneration right where you are.

🌿 In this episode:

• Why “positive practical permaculture” matters now more than ever
• The idea of myceliation — how change spreads through small acts of care
• How to begin designing your life, not just coping with it
• What happens when we link personal wellbeing with planetary wellbeing

WATCH YOUTUBE VERSION

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🌱 Join the Permaculture Educators Complete Collection – Special January Offer

If you’re ready to take your learning further, the Permaculture Educators Complete Collection is open 7 – 31 January.

It offers lifetime access to my our core online permaculture courses - the Permaculture Design Certificate, Permaculture Teachers Certificate, Permaculture Business Modules, The Incredible Edible Garden and SHARE Permaculture - with a yearlong access to HIVE - our community hub

Gain practical tools to help you design, teach, and share permaculture in your own context.

👉 Learn more and join here: https://permacultureeducationinstitute.org/permaculture-educators-program

🔗 Watch the video version on YouTube @SenseMakinginaChangingWorld and follow on Instagram: sensemaking.podcast @moraggamble | @permacultureeducationinstitute

I'd love to hear from you. Text me here.

Support the show

_____________________________

Subscribe to this podcast, share widely, leave a comment and a 5 star review to help these stories myceliate far.

• Check out the Sense-Making in a Changing World podcast website & Youtube channel

This podcast is hosted by Morag Gamble, founder of the Permaculture Education Institute - the leading-edge international online school for integrated permaculture design, education, leadership and [pr]activism.⁠

• Save 50% on Morag Gamble's Permaculture Educators Complete Collection (available only 7-31 Jan, 2026)
• Talk with Morag here about this program.

Find more of Morag's conversations at the International Permaculture Festival of Wild Ideas.

This podcast is broadcast from a solar powered studio in the midst of a permaculture ecovillage on Jinibara & Gubbi Gubbi country.

In this episode of Sense Making in a Changing World, I speak with regenerative farmer and Bionutrient Food Association founder Dan Kittredge from the United States.

Together we explore what it really means to grow nutrient dense food and nourish the microbiome, in the soil and in our own bodies.

Dan shares decades of experience and research that reveal just how wide the gap is between food that truly nourishes and food that simply fills us up. We talk about the huge variation in nutrient levels between different samples of the same crop, why this happens and what it means for human health and climate.

We touch on:

• How two carrots from different farms can have four to ten times difference in key nutrients
• Why labels like organic or local only tell part of the story of food quality
• What happens when we take soil out of the equation and grow food in hydroponic systems
• Why Dan says we should be growing for the microbiome in the soil and in our own bodies
• Practical ways gardeners and farmers can start shifting their practice toward truly nutrient dense food

My hope is that this conversation helps you look at the food on your plate and the soil under your feet in a new way, and encourages you to keep experimenting in your own gardens, farms, kitchens and communities.

I'd love to hear from you. Text me here.

Support the show

_____________________________

Subscribe to this podcast, share widely, leave a comment and a 5 star review to help these stories myceliate far.

• Check out the Sense-Making in a Changing World podcast website & Youtube channel

This podcast is hosted by Morag Gamble, founder of the Permaculture Education Institute - the leading-edge international online school for integrated permaculture design, education, leadership and [pr]activism.⁠

• Save 50% on Morag Gamble's Permaculture Educators Complete Collection (available only 7-31 Jan, 2026)
• Talk with Morag here about this program.

Find more of Morag's conversations at the International Permaculture Festival of Wild Ideas.

This podcast is broadcast from a solar powered studio in the midst of a permaculture ecovillage on Jinibara & Gubbi Gubbi country.

In this episode of Sense-Making in a Changing World, I sit down with Abel Pearson – permaculture educator, community food grower and co founder of Glasbren, an award winning community-supported agriculture project in rural Wales.

Glasbren began as a three acre permaculture designed market garden and has now moved to Lord’s Park Farm, a 134 acre National Trust property on the cliffs where the Taf and Tywi rivers meet the sea in Carmarthenshire.

Abel and his family are the first permaculture based tenants on a National Trust farm, creating a flagship project for nature friendly, community facing farming.

In our conversation we explore:

• Abel’s journey from woofing and natural building to discovering permaculture as “the origin” of everything he now does
• How Glasbren grew from a three acre CSA into a whole farm vision at Lord’s Park
• Designing a landscape and an organisation with permaculture ethics: earth care, people care, fair share
• Indigenous and historic food systems as deeply “permacultural” ways of living in reciprocity with land
• Beingof a place when you may not be from there – and how growing food together becomes daily practice in belonging
• Welsh language, culture and land
• Community supported agriculture, food security and the fragility of our current food system
• Wales’ shift toward agroecology, social value payments for farms, and support for small scale growers
• The practicalities of funding and holding a diversified social enterprise farm
• Volunteering at Glasbren as a pathway into community, wellbeing and climate action
• Family life in the middle of a farm that is also a community hub

Abel’s reflections weave beautifully with the core of permaculture education – that we are learning a way of seeing and relating, not just a collection of techniques. This episode is an invitation to slow down, listen to place, and see farms and gardens as sites of cultural and ecological repair.

Glasbren website: https://www.glasbren.org.uk

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I'd love to hear from you. Text me here.

Support the show

_____________________________

Subscribe to this podcast, share widely, leave a comment and a 5 star review to help these stories myceliate far.

• Check out the Sense-Making in a Changing World podcast website & Youtube channel

This podcast is hosted by Morag Gamble, founder of the Permaculture Education Institute - the leading-edge international online school for integrated permaculture design, education, leadership and [pr]activism.⁠

• Save 50% on Morag Gamble's Permaculture Educators Complete Collection (available only 7-31 Jan, 2026)
• Talk with Morag here about this program.

Find more of Morag's conversations at the International Permaculture Festival of Wild Ideas.

This podcast is broadcast from a solar powered studio in the midst of a permaculture ecovillage on Jinibara & Gubbi Gubbi country.

What if the forest you walk through is already a food garden, and the real work is remembering how to see it that way?

In this episode of Sense Making in a Changing World I am in conversation with writer and public radio host Elspeth Hay about her beautiful new book Feed Us with Trees: Nuts and the Future of Food. Elspeth calls in from her home on Cape Cod and shares how one simple realisation changed everything for her: acorns ARE food.

From that moment she began following nut trees back through time and across continents, uncovering oak, chestnut and hazel commons, stories of enclosure and colonisation, and the quiet resilience of people who never stopped tending tree foods. Together we explore how this different way of seeing opens a path toward food systems that feed people and whole ecosystems at the same time.

We talk about:

• How nut trees like oak, chestnut and hazel can sit at the centre of generous food systems
• Why perennial tree based polycultures can out produce industrial monocultures once we count the full costs
• Humans as potential keystone species rather than ecological mistakes
• Cultural burning, oak woodlands and remembering that our presence can be beneficial
• Commons, local economies and finding belonging by staying rooted in a place

Elspeth invites us to see ourselves as “radical regenerators” who are not just analysing the old story of agriculture, but actively weaving new ones in our own communities.

ABOUT ELSPETH HAY
Elspeth Hay is a writer and public radio host based on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. She created The Local Food Report, a weekly program on CAI, the Cape and Islands NPR station, and her work on food and ecology has appeared in places such as the Boston Globe, NPR and Heated with Mark Bittman. Her book Feed Us with Trees: Nuts and the Future of Food explores how nut trees and tree centred cultures can help us reimagine food, history and our ecological role as humans. You can learn more about Elspeth and her work at: elspethhay.com

I hope this episode encourages you to look again at the

I'd love to hear from you. Text me here.

Support the show

_____________________________

Subscribe to this podcast, share widely, leave a comment and a 5 star review to help these stories myceliate far.

• Check out the Sense-Making in a Changing World podcast website & Youtube channel

This podcast is hosted by Morag Gamble, founder of the Permaculture Education Institute - the leading-edge international online school for integrated permaculture design, education, leadership and [pr]activism.⁠

• Save 50% on Morag Gamble's Permaculture Educators Complete Collection (available only 7-31 Jan, 2026)
• Talk with Morag here about this program.

Find more of Morag's conversations at the International Permaculture Festival of Wild Ideas.

This podcast is broadcast from a solar powered studio in the midst of a permaculture ecovillage on Jinibara & Gubbi Gubbi country.

Learning to Lead Like Life Itself

How do we lead in a way that feels alive, kind, and connected to the living world?

In this episode of Sense-Making in a Changing World, Morag is joined by Kelly Wendorf, author of Flying Lead Change and founder of EQUUS, whose work brings together horses, neuroscience, and ancient wisdom to reimagine what leadership can be.

Kelly shares about leadership as a natural, relational process. Not command and control, but care and connection - moving from hierarchy to harmony.

Her principles of leadership — Safety, Connection, Peace, Freedom, and Joy — mirror what we see in every thriving ecosystem. The same qualities that sustain a healthy forest or a permaculture garden can also sustain our families, workplaces, and communities.

Morag and Kelly talk about what it means to lead from presence, to cultivate trust rather than fear, and to listen so deeply that the next right action becomes obvious.

Rewilding leadership is about remembering that life already knows how to lead. Our task is to learn again how to be in conversation with it - to listen to the more-than-human world, and to design our cultures, systems, and movements in ways that honour the web of life we’re part of.

This is a conversation for anyone sensing that leadership is less about power and more about participation - an invitation to step back into the flow of life and let nature show the way.

🌿 In this episode we explore:

• What rewilded leadership looks and feels like
• How the wisdom of the herd translates into human relationships
• The connection between permaculture and leadership
• Leading from behind: creating confidence, not control
• Presence as a regenerative force in times of change

Kelly Wendorf is a leadership coach, educator, and founding partner of EQUUS, an innovative organisation offering experie

I'd love to hear from you. Text me here.

Support the show

_____________________________

Subscribe to this podcast, share widely, leave a comment and a 5 star review to help these stories myceliate far.

• Check out the Sense-Making in a Changing World podcast website & Youtube channel

This podcast is hosted by Morag Gamble, founder of the Permaculture Education Institute - the leading-edge international online school for integrated permaculture design, education, leadership and [pr]activism.⁠

• Save 50% on Morag Gamble's Permaculture Educators Complete Collection (available only 7-31 Jan, 2026)
• Talk with Morag here about this program.

Find more of Morag's conversations at the International Permaculture Festival of Wild Ideas.

This podcast is broadcast from a solar powered studio in the midst of a permaculture ecovillage on Jinibara & Gubbi Gubbi country.

In this episode of Sense-Making in a Changing World, I speak with acclaimed artist Bryony Kimmings and award-winning projection designer Will Duke about their powerful new theatre work, Bog Witch.

Commissioned for the launch season at Soho Theatre Walthamstow, Bog Witch is Bryony’s first solo work in over five years. Known for her fearless, hilarious, and deeply moving autobiographical creations, Bryony has been called “an artist of exceptional integrity, imagination, compassion and guts” by The Guardian. Her work spans theatre, film, and television, including projects with the BBC, Channel 4, and the National Theatre.

Will is a leading projection designer whose practice spans opera, theatre, and dance. His acclaimed visual designs have appeared on international stages from the Royal Opera House to the National Theatre. Will is also a student of the Permaculture Education Institute, weaving ecological design principles into both his creative work and daily life.

Together, they open up about how storytelling itself can be a form of climate action — using humour, vulnerability, and imagination to re-enchant culture and invite us back into the web of life.

We are living in a time when climate narratives risk becoming tired or overwhelming. What Bryony and Will remind us is that culture shifts through stories — stories that make us laugh, cry, grieve, and imagine differently.

• 🎟 Tickets for Bog Witch: Soho Theatre
• 🌐 Bryony Kimmings
• 🌐 Will Duke

I'd love to hear from you. Text me here.

Support the show

_____________________________

Subscribe to this podcast, share widely, leave a comment and a 5 star review to help these stories myceliate far.

• Check out the Sense-Making in a Changing World podcast website & Youtube channel

This podcast is hosted by Morag Gamble, founder of the Permaculture Education Institute - the leading-edge international online school for integrated permaculture design, education, leadership and [pr]activism.⁠

• Save 50% on Morag Gamble's Permaculture Educators Complete Collection (available only 7-31 Jan, 2026)
• Talk with Morag here about this program.

Find more of Morag's conversations at the International Permaculture Festival of Wild Ideas.

This podcast is broadcast from a solar powered studio in the midst of a permaculture ecovillage on Jinibara & Gubbi Gubbi country.

In this inspiring conversation, Morag Gamble speaks with Rob Hopkins - Transition Towns co-founder, author of How to Fall in Love with the Future, and creator of Field Recordings from the Future.

Together they explore why imagination is vital for permaculture, community resilience, and regenerative culture, and how anyone can practice imagination activism to create hopeful, practical change.

Rob shares stories of playful, community-led projects, his work with sensory futuring, and how cultivating longing rather than fear can mobilise people to act for a thriving future.

If you’re a permaculture educator, changemaker, or someone longing for new possibilities, this episode will give you tools and inspiration to nurture imagination in your community.

Rob Hopkin's links:

• Rob Hopkins website: robhopkins.net
• Book: How to Fall in Love with the Future
• Record: Field Recordings from the Future
  
  

Key Themes

• How imagination fuels permaculture and community design
• Transition Towns and lessons from grassroots change
• Inspiration from and for permaculture.
• Sensory futuring and field recordings from the future
• Cultivating longing vs. anxiety in movements for change
• How to make activism joyful, creative, and effective

I'd love to hear from you. Text me here.

Support the show

_____________________________

Subscribe to this podcast, share widely, leave a comment and a 5 star review to help these stories myceliate far.

• Check out the Sense-Making in a Changing World podcast website & Youtube channel

This podcast is hosted by Morag Gamble, founder of the Permaculture Education Institute - the leading-edge international online school for integrated permaculture design, education, leadership and [pr]activism.⁠

• Save 50% on Morag Gamble's Permaculture Educators Complete Collection (available only 7-31 Jan, 2026)
• Talk with Morag here about this program.

Find more of Morag's conversations at the International Permaculture Festival of Wild Ideas.

This podcast is broadcast from a solar powered studio in the midst of a permaculture ecovillage on Jinibara & Gubbi Gubbi country.