I completed a 4 year apprenticeship as a nurseryperson at Gills Nursery in Brighton, Victoria and later went on to complete a Cert.IV in Hort. at Burnley College studying Landscape Drawing and Design. I ran my own business in garden maintenance around Melbourne before traveling around Australia where I became a WWOOFER.

Ironically it was not until I moved up to Sydney and was working for a lawn-mowing company that one of my coworkers gave me a copy of Bill Mollison's Permaculture One. I always knew there was something more out there and when I read this book it all made sense....and then I was hooked!

In the last 4 years I have been project managing the Forster Community Garden where we enlist the help of volunteers including all sectors of the community and grow vegetables and herbs for our local soup kitchen. As a fundraiser for our garden we have developed a calendar with monthly tips and hints for a permaculture garden. This project is run thorough the local neighbourhood centre and this year the calendar will be distributed to another 8 neighbourhood centres on the mid north coast of NSW. In the last 4 years my husband and I have been building our rammed earth passive solar house with permaculture gardens and we are hoping to complete it by the end of 2011!