Why do I like teaching permaculture in Tinos Ecolodge since 2019

I’ve taught Permaculture in many places – on a Jamaican sugar cane plantation, in the docks in Sweden, the moors of England, and many venues around Southern Europe.

The Tinos Ecolodge is one of my favourite venues, its such a great place to explore regenerative living. The project itself is a super inspiring well designed eco centre, and the wildness of the land around it brings an expansiveness to the course, and a great balance to the intense weeks.

Every year I go back the Ecolodge has been improved in some way, as Marilia and Nico’s vision develops and new ideas come to them – another reservoir, new plantings, the chicken house moves, a bigger kitchen seating area is built…

It’s such a great example of permaculture in practice. Some of the most powerful sessions on the course are Nico and Marilia sharing about their designs and what they learnt whilst carrying them out. I love seeing the photos of the Ecolodge construction as they tell the story of how they have regenerated the place – from the soil to the wildlife to the water table. As ever the construction earthworks were quite shocking, but the investment in landforms and buildings will be paying off in biodiversity and human joy for decades – as the land dries and dies off around them, the site is increasingly noticeable for its trees, wildlife and green growth even in the summer.

One of my favourite parts of the course is the buildings tour, where we get to learn about how the beautiful ecohouses were designed and built, using computer modelling, scale models, and finally local stonemasons and large digging machines.

During the tour everyone who has been staying in one of the ecohouses gets to see and learn so much more about the space they have been living in, and what happens when they flush the toilet, or use a compost loo… (hint – it all gets recycled back onto the land : ) I love how permaculture helps us see, and understand so much more about the system we use and rely on.

I love the long, wide view down to the coast from the Ecolodge, and how dark the wild valley gets at night, before the sun rises over the sea, briefly outlining the island of Ikaria. I enjoy walking or running up to Potania and enjoying its springs and hidden pathways, and when I’m feeling fit, a run down to the beach, a swim and a slow jog back up helps me feel very alive. I usually leave the island fitter than when I arrive!

There are also lots of tracks on the land around the Ecolodge – some officially waymarked with signs, others just the tracks that the wild goats use, or old human paths mostly abandoned now. The landscape is one big agricultural sculpture really – trackways made out of the flat stones snaking in between terraces made of the flat stone, and occasionally earth roofed stables/huts made out of the same flat stones. I can easily imagine people working in this valley, walking up the tracks to the villages with their harvests, or spending a night in a stable/hut before continuing work the next day. They used to grow cereals all over this island, and you can still see wild oats growing, but most of the terraces look unused now, though a few are still used for keeping animals or olive trees woven with irrigation pipes.

The land outside the lodge, mostly brittle and dry, growing only goat-proof spiky small bushes, is such a contrast to the growing lushness of the land inside the Ecolodge fences, where the water, soil, plants and animals are regenerated and renewed.