Mike Lee 55 years old - born in Liverpool, 1969!

So it’s been a really good challenge getting stuck in on my travels over the years and I’ve been forest gardening and making attempts to improve my personal power through developing my interest in living a more natural, grounded life, which for me also includes an active interest in other cultures and in Shamanism. It’s a process I’m still engaged with and it’s a great thing to be sharing this with you… I started a travel blog about some of these experiences and some of my thoughts about life called forest gardeners.
Please see my blog for some of the work I did in Paraguay, in the beautiful Ybytyruzu national park, trying to educate farmers to stop their destructive, slash & burn, clear-felling methods and replace them with ‘Sloping Agricultural Land Technologies.’
In South Africa, in the Drakensberg mountains, I was working at a highland farm, which also offered tourism services and at the other end of the continent, I was trying to practice ‘electroculture’ in an Oasis in southern Morocco in the Sahara desert! That was a bit of a disaster as it wasn’t a suitable place to do it!
Together with my friend Wayne, we helped to design and plant out a Forest Garden at a Montessori school in southern Berlin, together with the some of the parents, teachers and children. This was a lovely experience working in community and some of my favourite volunteering and living experiences have been living in intentional communities like the Pinakarri community in Perth, Fremantle and the Koanga Gardens community in New Zealand.
On Negros island in the Philippines, I had been out trekking & when coming back down a mountain slope through Apolong village, I noticed a sign – “Destiny Wellness Centre!” My curiosity got the better of me and as luck would have it, the two fellas inside, one who had built the first pyramid centre in Negros, Dan, together with Eric, were both keen herbalists and botanists. Dans place was popular as he was training up a local girl called Queeny, to cook with all the delicious ingredients, like a jackfruit curry with the freshly pressed virgin coconut oil, we went to buy from the local coconut farmers association in Barangay Liptong and they were happy to show us around and show us the whole process. From the shells, they also make brightly coloured jewellery.
And Eric lives and works as the curator at the nearby Siit Arboretum Botanical Garden – https://siitarboretum.com/about-us/ which is an educational and conservation initiative he helped to create. It’s in a small village by the coast called Lutoban, Zamboanguita. After inviting me to come and stay, he asked if I would like to do a research project and if anything came to mind! Even though I didn’t know all that much about Tropical Botany or Agriculture at that time in my life, I gratefully accepted his opportunity! What a chance to learn!
References for development / farming / gardening from my help exchange hosts since 2011!