Oliver Kellhammer (Permaculture Institute of North America Diplomate and Practicing Member) is an ecological artist, activist and writer who has been a permaculture instructor since the early 1990’s. After moving to the west coast from his native Toronto, he founded Cottonwood Gardens in Vancouver, one of Canada’s largest community gardens and public permaculture demonstration facilities as well as the Means of Production biomaterials garden, which produces plant-based materials for the use of artists and craftspeople in an East Vancouver park. Oliver co-taught the permaculture component of the Linnaea Farm Ecological Gardening Program for many years and has lectured worldwide on topics of permaculture, urban ecology, biomaterials and climate change resiliency. Through his botanical interventions and public art projects, he seeks to demonstrate nature’s surprising ability to recover from damage. His work facilitates the processes of environmental regeneration by engaging the botanical and socio-political underpinnings of the landscape and continues to evolve into new forms. Recent projects have focused on cleaning up contaminated soils, reintroducing prehistoric trees onto landscapes damaged by industrial forestry and cataloging the biodiversity of brownfield ecologies. Dividing his time between Cortes Island and New York’s East Village, he lectures on Sustainable Systems at Parsons The New School for Design.  His web archive can be found at www.oliverk.org. 

Hannah Roessler

Hannah is passionate about plants and deeply committed to food sovereignty. As an agrologist and ethnobotanist, her work and research focuses on agroecology, permaculture, food/medicine plants, and Indigenous land-management and cultivation techniques. 

Hannah consults on a variety of projects, ranging from urban community gardens and small-acre permaculture designs, to eco-cultural resurgence initiatives. She has worked closely with different First Nations to develop and deliver curriculum based on ethnobotany, ethnoecology and food security, and has consulted to Universities that are seeking to explore land-based learning models.

Some of her work explores how food producers and/or harvesters in the PNW are experiencing, and adapting to, climate change. She is particularly interested in community responses that bolster resilience in food systems, and enjoys working with communities who are learning how to grow food in less-than-ideal conditions.

Hannah lectures on Ethnobotany, Ethnoecology and Permaculture Design at the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria. She is the Founding Dean of the Permaculture Design and Resilient Ecosystems Diploma at Pacific Rim College, and also teaches at the Horticulture Center of the Pacific and OUR Ecovillage. 

Hannah was an organic farmer for 10 years, in Canada, the US and Nicaragua, with the majority of her experience based in the Coastal Douglas Fir Biogeoclimatic zone.

In addition to her love of plants and people, Hannah is a keen, yet amateur, photographer and videographer, and applies these tools as often as she can in her work. She loves to collaborate, and is so grateful for the many teachers she’s had, in both the plant and human world, along the way.

Adam Huggins

​Adam ho​lds a BSc in Biology and Environmental Studies from the University of Victoria, as well as a Diploma in the Restoration of Natural Systems.  He  received his PDC in 2011, studying under Starhawk and Erik Ohlsen.  He is primarily diurnal, operating at the intersection of ecological restoration, regenerative agriculture, and conservation.  Over the past decade, he has worked from central California to the north coast of BC on plant nurseries, restoration projects, permaculture farms, and remote field studies.  Currently, he practices (im)permaculture and ecological restoration for the Galiano Conservancy Association on Galiano Island.  When the sun goes down, he retires to his den, where he helps produce the Future Ecologies podcast and reads books about plants.