Antonio Scotti

I am a permaculture designer, consultant, trainer and tutor (of the diploma in applied permaculture design at ACAPI) based in Spain. I formally joined the permies community in 2001, after doing my first PDC at Permacultura Montsant (Spain) ... 
After that I trained in Australia with Geoff Lawton first, at what is now known as the Zaytuna project, and later on at the Permaforest Trust.
Later on, in 2009, I organized and participated on a PDC lead by Darren Doherty in Mallorca.

I have facilitated over 45 introductory permaculture courses and 13 permaculture design certificate courses (PDC), as the principal facilitator, in Spain, and as assistant teacher in Portugal and Greece. The PDC facilitated in Greece happened in the Lavrios Refugee Camp, near Athens, in 2019, together with Rosemary Morrow, under the auspices of the organization ‘Permaculture For Refugees’ (of which I am a founding member) and the local organization Neaguinea, where many Syrian, Afghani, and African refugees were waiting for a better situation to unfold for them.
I have also been facilitating short workshops on home scale irrigation systems and water efficient growing beds such as ‘wicking beds’, very useful to highly reducing evaporation in very dry and hot weather, as well as synergistic agriculture workshops.

In 2024 I facilitated an on-line training hosted by UNDP Syria which focused on Water Management Strategies and Methodologies in arid and semi-arid landscapes.

Since 2015 to this date, I have been involved in the development of the Iberian Permaculture Academy as one of the founding members and tutor, where the ‘Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design’ is offered.

Consulting and design activity mainly in Spain and Portugal, where I have had clients needing to refurbish their small properties (2-5 Ha), in order to gain a certain degree of self-sufficiency and resilience towards the changing and worsening climate and economic conditions. In most of these situations, organic food production of locally adapted species (trees and shrubs, mixed orchards, forest gardens), soil and water management, introduction of small animals were the main drivers. In some cases I have also directed and executed the implementation works.

In the past I have also consulted for schools wanting to remodel their ‘desert-like’ playgrounds in order to allow for alternative types of games and relationships to happen (that is reducing importance of the playground as a football field only) and other more environmentally sound activities such as: food growing, shade, habitat for animals, managing storm water, etc.

I have been involved in the design and implementation of 2 urban community gardens in the city of Barcelona, providing food as well as Earth-based and social activities for many local residents, including myself. One of these gardens could only be irrigated thanks to rainwater harvesting, during the local rainy season, using IBC tanks and a local underground cistern. I have also worked as an intern at Northey Street City Farm in Brisbane (Australia), in 2005.
Design and implementation of a forest garden project within the premises of a local intentional community in the foothills of the city of Barcelona.

I am also a founding member of a food-coop in the Gracia neighbourhod of Barcelona, l'Aixada, which has been distributing local organically grown food for the last 20 years to over 150 families over the years.