The annual hui is a vibrant showcase of permaculture in Aotearoa, shaped each year by the unique character of the host bioregion.
Organised collaboratively by the hui team and the PiNZ Council, each gathering reflects a diversity of permaculture practice, sparks timely and meaningful conversations, and strengthens the networks that support our growing community across Aotearoa.
The hui offers an inspiring and enriching experience for all participants—introducing permaculture principles and concepts, fostering connection, and welcoming newcomers into the community. It’s a valuable opportunity to build relationships with aligned individuals, groups, and networks, and to contribute to positive change within our society.
Table of Contents
2026 Nelson Hui
When
Friday 10th April to Monday 13th
They are in the middle of the school holidays, making it attractive for families to come – combining hui attendance with a holiday in this adventure some region. We plan on having an awesome children’s programme within the hui.
Where
Whakatui Marae (accommodation, meals, workshops), plus Founders Heritage Park neighbouring facilities (keynote speakers sessions, workshops, Sat evening social).
Travel
Read up on the various options for getting to Nelson.
Schedule
Speakers
Kaitiakitanga – Indigenous Wisdom & Bioregional Ecology
Thalea Tane
(Te Roroa, Ngāpuhi, Ngati Korokoro, Ngāti Whātua)
Thalea is passionate about creating positive change and improving the lives of others through her work as a “Connectivity Catalyst”. She recently served as Project Manager for ‘Reconnecting Northland’, where she guided projects that aim to reconnect communities and foster social cohesion whilst caretaking the environment. She has a long-standing background in governance, finance, education, community and Iwi (indigenous) development, which includes interlinking ecological, social, cultural, and economic dimensions to co-create sustainable outcomes in Aotearoa and abroad.
Karl Russell
(Ngāi Tahu – Ngāti Huirapa/Ngāti Ruahikihiki, Ngāti Māmoe, Waitaha)
Karl works at the forefront of natural resource and environmental management. He is a longstanding advocate of freshwater, mahinga kai, and educates farm leaders on the importance of protecting the waterways for future generations. He co-founded the Aoraki Environmental Consultancy, and was an early member of the Ashburton Water Management Zone Committee, where he pioneered a form of collaborative water governance, which included local and regional councils, industry stakeholders, Ngāi Tahu iwi and the wider community.
Bioregeional Resilience Planning & Emergency Preparedness
Gary Williams
Gary resides on a small mixed farm and forestry enterprise, aptly named ‘Waterscape’, where he and his partner Emily carry out a diversity of farming and forestry activities using organic management methods and biodynamic practices. Here and around the bioregion, they teach permaculture courses and host guests at their ecological farmstay. Gary works from home as a self-employed consulting engineer in the field of water and soil resource management. He was on the scene providing emergency permaculture solutions to local communities during the Christchurch earthquakes, and beyond. Gary is the author of several books on cultural transformation, alternative economics, regenerative horticulture, and about living a full life in the world we live in.
Debbie Pearson
Debbie is the Chair of ‘Mohua 2042 Charitable Trust’, a community-led bioregional trust working to support a thriving, resilient and regenerative future for Golden Bay. She is passionate about regenerative, sustainable approaches that support thriving people and ecosystems, and her immersion in the natural world and local community strongly shapes her work. With a background as a chemical engineer, herbalist, and senior leader across government and corporate sectors, Debbie brings strong systems thinking and practical leadership to community-led change.
Food & Seed Sovereignty
Jessica Hutchings
Jessica is a kaupapa Maori research leader trained in the fields of environmental and Indigenous studies, with a deep investment and passion to live her life in ways that uplift the wellbeing of people and the land. She was instrumental in establishing Hua Parakore, a Māori organics framework which strengthens Māori food sovereignty and self-reliance, and the world’s first Indigenous validation and verification system for Kai Atua (pure food). Jessica practices Hua Parakore principles and methodology on her small family farm in the Wellington region.
Angela Clifford
Angela runs ‘The Food Farm’ in North Canterbury, a rural Permaculture property where she grows an abundance of organic food with her family, using her farm as a place to teach and inspire others to establish their own food resilience – as described in her recent book ‘The Food Farm’. Angela is also the founder and director of ‘Eat NZ’ – a not-for-profit national food movement dedicated to connecting people to land and ocean through quality food, facilitating a thriving food system, which includes profiling exemplary chefs and farmers.
Julia Milne
Julia is a powerful community change-maker, who co-founded Common Unity Project Aotearoa – an urban community-based Charitable Trust that grows food, skills, leadership and enterprise. Arising out of her humble beginnings as a food garden facilitator at Epuni Primary School, she established ‘The Remakery’ in Lower Hut, a significant community enterprise, food production and vocational skills training centre. Now as a project manager of He Puawai Trust, Julia continues her grassroots work in pioneering local food resilience through education and kai skills development, shaping community hubs that help to restore and develop sustainable local food systems.
Food Forests Evolving
Klaus Lotz
Klaus is a syntropic agroforestry and permaculture consultant, tutor, researcher, and holistic farmer. Alongside his family of three generations, he has created PermaDynamics, a farm in New Zealand that strives to work with nature by practicing and teaching syntropic agroforestry, biodynamics, and regenerative farming practices. Klaus brings his astute observation and permaculture design skills, together with his global plant relationship knowledge, to work intuitively to restore ecological balance and build fertile soils in tandem with abundant food production.
Zeb Horrell
Zeb is a regenerative land steward and community weaver, with a mission is to foster bioregional resilience and ecological awareness for future generations. After transitioning his family’s 1,000-acre sheep farm in Southland to more ecological practices, he founded the Future Whenua Collective, to support land-based solutions through education, collaboration, and events. Zeb now works as the Chief Regenerative Practitioner at Mangaroa Farms – a resilient community food hub and educational centre that integrates food forests, market gardening, native forest regeneration, and regenerative grazing practices.
Jason Ross
Jason lives with his family in Waitati, Coastal Otago on a quarter acre food laden paradise. He is passionate about making food growing accessible for all! His business is ‘Habitate’, a landscape nursery growing plants for rich and diverse edible landscapes, many of which he permaculture designs for his clients. With a Fine Arts degree and decades of hands-on horticulture experience, Jason blends creativity with a deep love of nature to create thriving, resilient food gardens and educational seasonal calendars and books, his latest being ‘Homegrown Fruit: a Practical Guide’.
Permaculture Roots & Global Activism
David Holmgren
David is best known as the co-originator of permaculture. In 1978, he and Bill Mollison published Permaculture One, starting the global permaculture movement. Since then, David has developed three properties, consulted and supervised on urban and rural projects, written eight more books, and presented lectures, workshops and courses in Australia and around the world. His writings over those three decades span a diversity of subjects and issues, whilst always illuminating aspects of permaculture thinking and living.
Finn Mackesy
Finn is a qualified educator, facilitator, and designer with a passion for empowerment and resilience. He has been actively involved in permaculture education, community development and changemaking in Aotearoa since 2003, focusing on social ecology, social innovation and social design. He’s now devoting time to developing his families permaculture property in Raglan. Finn is the co-founder of Auckland Permaculture Workshop, Grey Lynn 2030, Transition Pt. Chevalier, Permaculture Friend Savings, Common Ground Community Gardens and Resilio Studio.
Dave Hursthouse or Leo Geddes
‘The Learning Environment’ – where wellbeing, learning, and ecological restoration come together. Through donations of kai to community groups, growing native plants for local restoration projects, and providing ecological services in the Manawatu-Whanganui Region, this dynamic organisation nurtures connections between people and the land, deepening community partnerships, and creating experiences that support hauora – the health of land, people and community.
Ecovillages & Land-based Communities
Robin Allison
Robin had her own sustainable architecture practice until 1995, when she initiated Earthsong Eco-Neighbourhood in Ranui, Auckland – an award-winning cohousing neighbourhood that models socially and environmentally sustainable urban living. From her position as Earthsong’s project coordinator, she detailed the collective endeavour of Earthsong’s development in her book, ‘Cohousing for Life’, where she shares both personal and practical elements that created such an innovative housing development. Robin now runs seminars and workshops, writes, consults, and supports other community projects in sustainable living around New Zealand.
Simone Woodland
Simone is a UK-trained architect and Edmund Hillary Fellow based in Golden Bay. She is the founder and resident of Tākaka Cohousing Neighbourhood, a form of intentional and clustered living with shared common spaces and neighbourhood lifestyle. Simone was also the project co-ordinator of Mōhua Ventures, the charitable development company behind the cohousing village. She continues her work to create ecologically designed neighbourhoods for collective wellbeing, under the banner of ‘Circle Living’, a people-focused property development company, striving to build thriving intergenerational neighbourhoods across NZ.
Tanya Mottl
A Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) Ambassador since 2019, Tanya works from the permaculture principle of observe and interact, using theMap of Regeneration, Resilient Communities CardsandThe Collaboration Game to bring experiential learning and play into how communities listen, collaborate and create change together. She is a member of Narara Ecovillage, a 13year old intentional community of 180 cooperative members on the Central Coast of NSW, Australia, where regenerative living is grounded in relationship — with place, people and culture, using sociocratic style governance. Narara is aligning with local Indigenous custodians to integrate living knowledge and co-vision a flourishing future.
Verena Gruner
Verena is a recognised elder in the field of community development. She brought her talents in community organisation to Riverside Community when she moved there in 2004 from Renaissance Community in nearby Ngātīmoti, a self-reliant commune-style farm, where she raised her family for 21 years. During that time, she co-founded and taught at Mountain Valley School, an independent holistic education centre, based on the philosophy and practices of ‘democratic education’. During her 20 years at Riverside, Verena has been their organic garden manager, public workshops co-ordinator, cheesemaking tutor, sociocratic-style meeting facilitator, provider of copious community meals and a great events coordinator, the most notable being her family-friendly music festivals. Over the past few years she has been managing a newish co-operative venture, the ‘Kōmitimiti Riverside Cafe Project’.
Field Trips
Departing 2pm on 10 April Monday for either Nelson (urban) or Motueka (rural), you choose which. Then staying overnight at Riverside Community in Motueka, and travelling to Golden Bay on Tuesday morning, 14 April, for one or two days (you choose) of field trips. Booking will be separate from the hui, but in tandem with it.
Volunteering
We have limited work exchange slots (8 for kitchen and a diversity of 8 others). Please apply promptly to ensure you are in for the best opportunity to secure a place.
Your work-exchange all-inclusive ticket includes full attendance, all food and marae accommodation at the hui, but does not include transport, nor participation in the tours following the hui.
