Design, Mentoring & Consultation
Do you want to align your daily life, your work or your business with your true values? Maybe you want to create an abundant, biodiverse food growing space for your community or develop your land in a way that works with nature? Or perhaps you’ve had a realisation that you want to earn your crust in a more ethical, kinder and sustainable way?
Well, we can help you, with coaching and mentorship, design services, practical support and networks and a years of experience of creating a community-based enterprise with ecological design and the ethics of permaculture - earth care, people care, fair share - as it’s foundation. Here at Glasbren, we believe that personal, social & ecological health and regeneration are intertwined, and the challenges of our time must be approached together, holistically, as intersectional.
Mentoring & Consultation
We can help you build a lifestyle, livelihood or enterprise that reflects your passion and core values and but that is also regenerative, leaves a positive impact on the living world and is in service to the Earth and the challenges of our times.
Within our team, we have a rich experience in creating regenerative livelihoods and social and community enterprises - social entrepreneurs, permaculture designers, herbalists, chefs, meditation teachers and sustainability educators, experts in regenerative ways of eating, working and living. We also have a vibrant network of contacts, relationships and supporters, and are tuned in to the food, environmental & social justice movements and the worlds of permaculture and edible horticulture, to support our work.
Our team will offer you the benefit of their experience, networks, knowledge and mistakes to help you clarify your vision, drawing on your passions, imagination and goals. We can then also help you with any aspects of design, implementation, fundraising, community-building and more, to realise that vision.
Permaculture Design Services
Permaculture is a holistic, ethical and imaginative approach to the design of regenerative, resilient and abundant living landscapes - whether it’s a backyard garden, smallholding, large farm, or even the landscape of your community, your organisation or indeed, your own inner landscape. It’s a way of thinking, a framework that draws on ecological science, indigenous wisdom and mimicking the patterns and systems found in nature.
Maybe you’re looking to start a community garden? Perhaps you’ve just bought a piece of land and want to design a productive, ecologically abundant & regenerative food growing operation? Our founder and permaculture designer, Abel, can help you to deepen your understanding of your land, help you apply a permaculture mindset & take an integrated, holistic approach to it’s design.
With careful analysis of your unique context, ecology & landscape, Abel can help you to design an intelligent, adaptive and abundant system, mimicking nature and promoting health and regeneration. From topography & the shape of your land, to how you produce energy, store carbon or save water, from broad strokes to smaller details, we’ll work with you to make sure your system is sustainable, regenerative and supports life, and individual, community and planetary health.
“Abel Oakenshade and Steffan Lemke-Elms have transformed a steep, poor-quality piece of marginal land into an abundant & thriving 1 acre market garden, inspired by permaculture principles and regenerative growing.”
To find out more about how we could help you use the principles of permaculture to design your garden, farm or piece of land, watch the above video.
If you feel like we might be able to help you, please do not hesitate to get in touch, and we’ll set up an initial free consultation to discuss your needs, your vision and how we can make the first steps towards realising it together!
Abel Oakenshade
Abel is a food grower and passionate permaculture educator, listening for the stories we need to reconnect to land, food and seed. He’s also a natural builder, a facilitator of deep experiences in wild places and the founder of Glasbren. He believes in food growing & foraging as a rich, exciting and accessible pathway to a deeper relationship with the living world, as a livelihood that’s in service to the Earth and for building a thriving culture & healthy communities and ecosystems. He loves to write, tell the old stories around a fire & running wild trails in the mountains or along steef sea cliffs. He is available for permaculture teaching, ecological design services, coaching, writing, storytelling and speaking.
@Abe_oakenshade
Steffan Lemke-Elms
Steffan is a food grower, peasant chef, social entrepreneur, and co-director of Glasbren. He grew up working on organic veg farms, trained in horticulture and has devoted his life to sustainability and helping others. Over the past decade, he has auctioned celebrities’ shoes to raise money for children in Africa, worked for the Eden project, recycled discarded wellies left behind at Glastonbury through his charity ‘Reboot’ and established the Sustainable Restaurant Association’s ‘Best Local Restaurant’ in Wales 2019-20. He’s also a director of the Nurture Centre, a wellbeing centre and community hub and has a wealth of experience in building kinder businesses & seeing ambitious visions through to reality.
@greensteff
Luisa Oakenshade
Luisa is a director of Glasbren, published writer, yoga & meditation teacher, experienced homesteader, forager and herbalist and a wholehearted mother. Over many years in India, Luisa not only immersed in meditation, but also learnt the pillars of intuitive cooking & trained in Ayurvedic pregnancy counselling, exploring how natural remedies, healing practices & meditation can nurture our health. She has run zero-waste workshops and vegetarian cooking classes for children and is unwavering in her devotion to living a zero-waste, organic and low impact life, rediscovering the old ways to live and eat seasonally, simply & within our limits and developing a felt, intuitive, whole relationship with our wild human selves.