Social Farming

Natural Orchard Care at Duhallow Social Farming

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A couple of weeks ago I was delighted to join up with Duhallow Social Farming in Newmarket in North Cork to give a demonstration and talk on natural orchard care. On the 24th of March I joined up with about a dozen local apple tree enthusiasts at the Duhallow Social Farming headquarters based at IRD Duhallow. Participants included farmers, retired farmers and gardeners all keen to get answers and ideas for how to best look after their precious apple trees. We were joined by Ellie Donovan and the Duhallow Social Farming team who organised and facilitated the event. The workshop took place in the Duhallow Social Farming orchard and in one of the spacious polytunnels on site, which are conveniently located beside each other. Why do we prune fruit trees? After the introductions I asked my usual opening question: “Why is that most trees know how to grow without training Continue Permaculture Story

Orchard Care Poster

Orchard Pruning Workshops Feb 2026

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Firstly, On Feb 21st we will have the regular winter pruning workshop with a focus on the formative pruning of young trees.
Then a week later on 28th Feb 2026 we will have a winter pruning workshop focusing on the restoration of mature and older neglected trees, which involves additional skills, considerations and concepts.
Both workshops will cover all the basics in orchard care, but each with special focus areas.
There will be plenty repetition of key points between the two courses, which would be highly beneficial to anyone seriously considering mastering their own orchard care.

Permaculture podcast

Paul Lynch Permaculture Podcast Interview

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In October 2024 I did my first interview with Cormac Harkin on the Permaculture Vine Podcast. Its all about my permaculture journey including my life and work story, professional insights, business challenges and how politics and permaculture relate to each other. Permaculture Vine Podacast Interview Cormac and I go through alot of topics in a short time. This is Cormac’s video description in youtube: Paul has combined his interests in nature and design to offer a permaculture design, drone mapping, and orchard care service from his home in Ireland since 2016. With a formal educational and professional background in engineering and design, he brings these skills into his design service. His home also functions as a testing ground for various permaculture methods and ideas, including vegetable growing, rainwater harvesting, stream water abstraction and filtration, drone mapping, fruit tree grafting for nursery establishment, grafting to mature trees, plant propagation from cuttings, Continue Permaculture Story

Winter snow Garden

Thank you 2025 and hello 2026 – when permaculture dreams come true!

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There is always something that can be done in permaculture, and it has been tempting to just make use of the good dry weather to get ahead with all the winter jobs calling out for attention. There is a risk of never taking a break to reflect – especially if your work involves orchard care it can be tempting to just drive on if dry weather presents itself! I’ve come to respect the deep winter natural pausing time however and I’m happy that the holiday time in mainstream society still largely reflects this. I find that even a couple of days spent looking back over the year and meditating on what I’d like to manifest in my world is very worthwhile.   On the professional front I remember wishing to take a bigger step into my teaching vocation this year, which really manifested in ways that I could not expect Continue Permaculture Story

Dripping with apples

Orchard Review 2025: An Epic Fruiting Year

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From the springtime of this year 2025, I was already drawing parallels with that fictional but very realistic epic harvest year in the Shire. In the spring there was a quality to the flowering trees I had never seen the like of, and can only describe as magical. The following fruit-set kept bearing along those epic lines, and most people with fruit trees noticed the bumper crop, and were scrambling to make provision for some worthwhile use of all that fruit.

apple pruning expert

Summer Orchard Pruning Season is Open!

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What a glorious fruitful year it is with many of the trees laden with fruit. The perennial question I am asked is: “Why oh why would you prune fruit trees in the summer? Surely its better in the winter?” The answer, as usual in permaculture, is: “it depends”. Most Fruit Trees are Summer Pruning Candidates Firstly, all of the prunus species of fruit tree are summer rather than winter candidates for pruning, so it you have cherries or plums winter pruning runs some extra disease risks. Most apple and pear trees benefit from summer pruning, many suffering from excessive winter pruning without the appropriate summer care. Summer pruning mostly addresses this year’s vigorous growth, directing that energy to future fruiting. So most mature apple and pear trees I tend to benefit from skillful summer pruning. Here is a little video about dealing with water shoots during summer pruning: I tend Continue Permaculture Story

orchard pruning ireland

Summer Pruning Workshop Story

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The pruning workshop covered the following topics: Why prune at all; the natural shape of an apple tree; the purpose of grafting; its effects and side-effects; summer pruning vs winter pruning; vegetative and fruiting wood; orchard guilds and design considerations; pollination; tools and tool care; disease pruning; pruning demos; plant succession mulching, and importantly, the Lorette system of summer pruning.

cartoon wind

Teaching Children Permaculture

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Permaculture farm in Dunmanway County Cork hosts summer language students from Bilbao It’s all happening around Dunmanway County Cork these days. Since I began my professional permaculture design practice, the area between Drimoleague and Dunmanway County Cork has shown to be a consistent hot-spot for permaculture projects. A few years ago I worked on a farm permaculture design for the Kingston family near Coolkellure, now known as Nowen Rock Regenerative Natural Habitats. Recently John Kingston and I have been collaborating on the build of another local permaculture project in that area. Teaching Children Permaculture John asked me if I spoke Spanish and if I would do a day teaching permaculture for a group of English language students coming from Bilbao to visit his farm. Of course I was delighted to get involved and do more teaching. It was quite a new challenge however as I had not taught children permaculture Continue Permaculture Story

Teaching permaculture

Garden Design Talk for the Kenmare Gardening Group

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Sustainable landscape design solutions for gardening and climate problems Earlier this month I was delighted to give a presentation on permaculture design to the Kenmare gardening group at the Gateway Methodist Church in Kenmare Co. Kerry. The church setting was fitting as I had some biblical analogies regarding creation, gardens, fruit, floods and sustainable landscape design. I put extensive research into this lecture and went as far as to write a whole article on my preparatory thoughts, partly as an exercise in putting my thoughts in order and partly to give an insight to my readers on this process. You can read this article here: https://permaculturedesign.ie/2025/05/30/sustainability-talks-for-local-groups/ In particular that article focuses on “design” as a cleavage term in society. When we hear that word, some people envisage a something pleasing to look at or behold in an aesthetic sense, while others think of something being “well designed” when it functions Continue Permaculture Story

Sustainability Expert

Sustainability Talks for Local Groups in Ireland

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In my permaculture design practice I have often noticed a parallel phenomenon: the most difficult, most constrained project sites are invariably the easiest to design and the best sites, in a conventional sense, are the hardest, requiring the most careful observation to design well.