Our favourite YouTube permaculture channels

When it comes to learning new skills, YouTube is a gold mine — and that’s also true of permaculture. From quick DIY videos to full masterclasses, there is an abundance of options online to deepen your understanding of permaculture, or to find the tips you need for your own garden.

This week, we give you a list of our favourite YouTube channels to learn about permaculture. Some are very professional, others are funny and informal, but all of them hold gems of knowledge that will be sure to take you a little bit closer to the food forest of your dreams.

Geoff Lawton: To learn from a master

Subscribers: 65,600

Geoff Lawton is a world renowned Permaculture consultant, designer and teacher, and his YouTube channel act as a free sample to his courses: introductory videos about composting, the power of water, the basics of soil fertility, amongst others, all professionally shot and edited for our viewing pleasure. On the channel, Lawton also dives deep into some of the permaculture projects he is involved in: Zaytuna Farm in NSW, Australia, and the Greening the Desert Project in the dead valley of Jordan. There’s also a number of snappy Q&A videos full of practical tips for focused aspects of permaculture.

Plant Abundance: Backyard food forest tips

Subscribers: 140,000

In these short weekly videos, California couple Dan and Alice share their best tips on growing and maintaining a small backyard food forest, based on their own practice. This channel is great for bite-sized videos that cover not just gardening do’s and don’ts, but also tips to catch water, use kitchen scraps and prepare your harvest for consumption.

Self Sufficient Me: To have fun while learning

Subscribers: 550,000

This is probably the most fun permaculture channel out there: Aussie family man Mark fills his informative videos with jokes and fun little takes for his viewers’ entertainment. In a fairly large piece of land, Mark raises chickens and ducks, as well as maintaining a prolific veggie garden, and his videos cover DIY structures, financial considerations as well as the odd exciting snake story — this is an Australian channel, after all.

The Gardening Channel with James Prigioni: Walking around a New Jersey permaculture garden

Subscribers: 289,000

James Prigioni is an amateur gardener that created a fruitful food forest in his backyard in about six years. He now shares his learnings on a variety of topics — from planting trees from cuttings to seed saving to big picture food forest design — in 5 to 15-minutes show and tell videos. Since Prigioni is based in New Jersey, his videos work particularly well for people in moderate climates.

Happen Films: A pleasure for the eyes

Subscribers: 176,000

This channel is made by professional filmmakers who offer viewers tours of permaculture homesteads and native growth forests, interviews with experts, and case studies about reducing waste. The videos are of outstanding visual quality, and feature a broad range of participants — from permaculture fathers like David Holmgren to an average Tasmanian family trying to reduce its impact on the environment.

Gardens that Matter: Focused on family

Subscribers: 11,500

On this North American channel, it’s all about family (and compost). Amy Landers’ videos regularly feature her children helping in the garden and fun tips to get kids involved. She also has a very strong focus on composting, with dedicated videos on particular food items that you can or cannot composts, as well as advice to keep compost healthy and rodent-free.