Slow design for living systems.
The Permaculture Podcast treats land design as a patient practice rather than a finished drawing. Scott Mann moves between site observation, beginner questions, moving to a new city, and conversations about regenerative money, supply chains, and community-rooted work.
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The Permaculture Podcast is a long-running, practice-minded show about designing with land, people, resources, and time. It values patience. Scott Mann often returns to the idea that permaculture starts before the shovel, before buying plants, and before the polished master plan. Recent episodes linger on the work that looks ordinary from the outside: walking a site again and again, noticing water movement, mapping shade, turning compost, reading nursery catalogs, choosing cultivars, and learning which ideas can actually be implemented. That plainness is the point. Mann pushes against heroic off-grid fantasies and treats boredom as part of the discipline, especially when systems need daily, seasonal, and yearly attention. The show also has a teacherly streak. Design is framed as education, with clients learning to understand their own land rather than receiving a finished plan that may never leave an email attachment. Beginner-focused episodes emphasize slowing down, observing for a full year, and grounding decisions in what a place reveals over time. Personal updates fold into the same framework. A move from Virginia to Cleveland becomes a way to think about urban density, walkable neighborhoods, a 1930 house, post-industrial landscapes, and the possibility of environmental recovery in a city with a complicated ecological history. The interviews broaden the definition of permaculture. Conversations with Joshua Hughes connect farms, turmeric products, cooperative ownership, Costa Rican land restoration, and regenerative supply chains to the same ethic of care. His appearances also bring money into view, asking where savings, investment, and market relationships land in real communities. An episode with Laura Oldanie adds more texture around values-based investing, local food sheds, distressed mortgages, community-owned land, and the transition between present financial systems and desired futures. The show is not glossy. It is careful. It suits listeners who want soil-level details and systems thinking in the same frame, with enough autobiography to show how ideas survive contact with moving boxes, clients, weather, and ordinary maintenance.
Made for: For permaculture learners, land stewards, urban homesteaders, designers, and values-driven investors who want patient, practical thinking. It especially suits listeners drawn to observation, place, and long-term ecological work.
What sets it apart: The show treats permaculture as an evolving process rather than a finished plan or aspirational lifestyle. Its range stretches from site walks and compost to Cleveland neighborhoods, regenerative supply chains, and human-scale finance.
Your resource for a variety of topics on Permaculture.
This is where your soil microbes meet your investment portfolio, with consequences attached to both.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Permaculture values meet local lending, food investment, and housing projects.
What would it mean to put permaculture values to work in decisions about money? This episode starts close to home, with investment in a local food shed and a lower-rate loan to someone in a trusted circle, then looks at projects farther afield.
Alan Savory considers what it means to manage a whole, from a family farm to national policy.
What does it mean to manage a whole? Alan Savory begins with a person at work and a family farm, then moves to corporations and national policy.
Practical answers for real garden problems.
Straightforward seasonal beekeeping, minus the waffle.
Permaculture at farm, city, and watershed scale.
Scott discusses how his permaculture design process evolved from collecting exhaustive client information to emphasizing observation and incremental change over comprehensive master plans.
Scott Mann discusses the unglamorous, repetitive daily tasks that are the real foundation of permaculture, contrasting them with idealized social media portrayals.
Host Scott Mann announces that he and his wife bought a house in Cleveland, detailing their remote house-hunting process and their plans for a permaculture lifestyle.
The host discusses the common beginner mistake of rushing into permaculture design and emphasizes the importance of slowing down to observe the land for a full year.
Host Scott Mann announces the podcast's move from Northern Virginia to Cleveland, Ohio, exploring how permaculture adapts to different places and the city's environmental recovery.
The Permaculture Podcast follows Joshua Hughes's launch of Rewild Organics, beginning with turmeric tincture and future powders and pills.
Joshua Hughes says Black Sheep’s agroforestry plans can generate a 40-times return while restoring Costa Rican forests.
Scott Mann and Lara Oldanie use The Permaculture Podcast to connect permaculture values with self-directed IRAs, solo 401ks, and banking choices that keep capital in local communities.
Elaine Ingham says every person should grow food and make compost to understand nature's daily messages.
Scott Mann shares a tribute to Dan Palmer and introduces an interview with Allan Savory on holistic management.
An interview with Brian and Alexandra of Inspiration Farm about their journey with permaculture and creating a thriving farm on 9 acres.
Andrew Millison discusses his 30-year journey in permaculture, from ecological design in Arizona to documenting global projects, addressing challenges at multiple scales.
Jude Hobbs discusses the design and benefits of functional hedgerows in permaculture, including funding opportunities for farmers.
Michael Judd shares his journey from tropical permaculture in Nicaragua to building a permaculture life and livelihood in Maryland.