Permaculture for Health Practitioners – Supporting your practice to flourish
A one-day course with Lusi Alderslowe and Lexington Love
Are you a doctor, counsellor, therapist, or health practitioner looking to bring more natural vitality into your work and wellbeing? This course introduces permaculture design as a practical and inspiring approach to support your practice by creating nature-inspired, beautiful, diverse, sensory spaces for you to sit, talk, listen, relax, and observe.
Grounded in ecopsychology and the growing evidence for green prescriptions, we’ll explore how even the smallest outdoor space – from a window box or balcony to a roof garden, patio, small garden, or even larger grounds – can be designed to promote mental and physical health and wellbeing.
In this course we will explore how permaculture can help us to design environments that nurture connection, resilience, and balance. For practitioners, this approach offers a way to feel supported and restore your own wellbeing as well as that of patients, clients, and colleagues.
Drawing inspiration from peace gardens, sensory gardens, herb gardens, and healing gardens to show how you can enrich your practice. We’ll explore how varied elements, such as restful seating, aromatic herbs, pollinator-friendly flowers, tasty plants, relaxing sounds, soft leaves, art, and water features, can be woven together to create a beautiful, peaceful place even in this increasingly busy world.
With a focus on low-maintenance, site-specific design, you’ll gain tools to make a bespoke space that truly reflects the needs of those who use it. There will be time to discuss the design of your site, if you have one, looking at the space through the lens of permaculture. The heart of permaculture design is observation, getting to know the space and who is in it – including the practitioners, the patients, the plants and animals – and working with nature to create the right conditions for everyone to flourish.
The current mental health crisis is rising, with 30-40% of GP visits linked to mental health. Given that nature-based interventions are proven to be effective for improving depressive mood, reducing anxiety, improving positive affect, and reducing negative affect*, it makes sense to integrate nature-based options into your practice. In addition, some people who struggle to express themselves are able to use the metaphors of nature to explain what is going on for them.
The role of nature connection in healthcare has never been more important. This course offers a practical and inspiring way to integrate permaculture design, ecopsychology, breath, movement, and green prescriptions into your work, supporting both practitioner wellbeing and client healing.
*Source Coventry et al (2021) Nature-based outdoor activities for mental and physical health: Systematic review and meta-analysis.
Who is this Permaculture course for?
All health practitioners such as doctors, counsellors, therapists, NHS staff, private practitioners, play therapists, dramatherapists, and occupational therapists, who would like to learn how to integrate nature connection into their practice.
The Permaculture for Health Practitioners course will cover:
- The benefits of nature connection to yourself and your clients including natural stress management and emotional regulation.
- How you can integrate nature connection to promote your client/patients’ well being.
- How you can transform your outdoor space, no matter how small or large – or even a sunny space indoors – to a biodiverse, therapeutic place.
- Ideas for practical elements you could place in your site to support your clients/patients, whether they are adults, children or families.
- How to design your site so it can be restorative, relaxing, inspiring, beautiful, peaceful, and diverse.
- How to root your practice in nature, restore your energy, and reimagine health through the healing power of place.
- How the facilitators could further support you with follow-up tutorials, site visits, site designs, implementation and garden creation.
What this Permaculture for Health Practitioners Course involves
A balance of theory and practice with case studies, outdoor activities and practical ideas you can use in your setting. The course format will integrate experiential learning with hands, heart, head and observation with all the senses, and be playful and uplifting. You will leave feeling restored and inspired, going forward with fresh enthusiasm to integrate nature connection into your practice.
Next available dates
Dates: Monday 14th September 2026
Time: 09.30 am to 4.00 pm, arrive at 9.15 am to start on time
Location: A lovely Brighton or Lewes outdoor location to be confirmed
Facilitators: Lusi Alderslowe and Lexington Love
Cost: £85.00
Please contact us if this price would prevent you from attending. Email [email protected]
Don’t Miss The Free Webinar
Who facilitates this Permaculture for Health Practitioners course?
Lusi Alderslowe is a permaculture educator of adults and children: an author of the Children in Permaculture Manual, a Permaculture Design Course teacher, an outdoor maths specialist, co-founder of Children in Permaculture, Children in Permaculture qualified trainer, a senior tutor for the Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design, a Forest School Leader, a Branching Out Leader, a Trainer of Teachers, and LGBTQ+.
Qualifications include MSc in Human Ecology (with distinction), BSc in Psychology, Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design, Training of Permaculture Teachers, Children in Permaculture – Outdoor Classrooms Teachers training by Australian pioneers Janet Millington and Carolyn Nuttal, Forest School Leader (level 3), Work that Reconnects facilitators training, Branching Out Leader training, Senior Tutor training for the diploma in applied permaculture design, and lots of short courses, such as LGBTQI+ inclusion training, outdoor first aid, campfire cooking, ecofootprint masterclass, PDC, food hygiene, ponds and wetlands, mental health first aid, etc.
Lusi forages, gardens, keeps chickens, cooks, cycles, walks, makes things from wood, and loves our abundant and beautiful Earth. She has a fun, informative, participatory teaching style with lots of diversity.
Find out more about Lusi Alderslowe.
Lexington Love is a creative facilitator, movement & visual artist, musician, permaculture designer/teacher & yoga teacher who designs and delivers projects worldwide with their unique, fresh, fun and creative style , They have worked in forests, woodlands, gardens, arts centres/galleries, businesses, hospitals, schools, prisons and retreat centres.
Lex has an MA in Puppetry, 4 years training in 3D design with distinction, 6 years deep study in yoga & yoga therapy plus 32 years of continual practice, 27 years of practising permaculture with various qualifications, including Social permaculture (cultural emergence) with a focus on people care, regenerative farming & worldwide wildlife corridor link-ups.
Current projects include –
- Artist in residence/creative director on a large multi-faceted intergenerational permaculture project in Newhaven Fort Road Rec
- Creating a touring show/kids online programme called ‘A Tiny Drop Of Magic’ which is a modern-day folktale about biodiversity and belonging, aimed at marginalised groups touring in a travelling greenhouse with puppet/mask show, birdbox sounds system and cinema
- CEO of Fionnlocha Wild Nature Sanctuary – Regeneration project in Southern Ireland focused on land, people & culture
Lex is GenderQueer and uses they/them pronouns. They regularly lead LGBTQI+ meditation retreats. Lex is passionate about inclusivity and diversity; they are a Level 3 BSL (British Sign Language) communicator, Mental Health First Aider and an Emergency First Aider.
Find out more about Lexington Love.
Testimonials from courses with Lusi Alderslowe and Lexington Love
LMN, a course participant on Ecovillage Findhorn Permaculture Design Course 2025
CB, a course participant on Ecovillage Findhorn Permaculture Design Course 2025
“Lex is extremely skilled at being able to respectfully and sensitively meet young people where they are at and playfully engage them in activities which gently challenge them on various levels. Lex is insightful, enthusiastic, sensitive and adaptable as well as being extraordinarily playful.”
MD Occupational Therapist, Sussex
Katrina Broadhill, Charity Manager for Brighton Permaculture Trust and 2024-25 Design Student