Who We Are
Muck & Magic are a partnership between Emily and Shila – friends who met on a permaculture design course and quickly realised that with their combined skills, experience, joy and energy they could offer some quality (northern!) muck and some sparkly magic to help the world around them grow.
Emily Howgate
Emily is a sustainability consultant and permaculture teacher. A nature kid at heart, her ecology degree and leadership MSc root her work in the natural world and systems thinking. She’s spent her career working in sustainable food and conservation, with groups like WWF and RSPB. Trained in compassionate communication and ‘Active Hope', Emily enjoys blending her wildlife-friendly growing experience with passion for nurturing our best human nature. You can often spot her on the footpaths around Stroud smiling with her dog.
”It seems to me that despite the troubles in the world, we can still create ‘patches of joy’ by bringing more liveliness, more resilience, to our spaces and ourselves.
And here, now, that matters.”
Shila Brown
Shila is a freelance consultant and coach who fell in love with nature-based gardening five years ago. She delivers community focussed projects for National Trust, the Long Table, and Grace Network amongst others, and in between times has worked alongside clients in their gardens across Stroud. Muck & Magic combines these two professional disciplines into bite-size packages. When not at work, Shila is the tenant on an off grid small holding on a tiny island in the Solway as well as being the mum of teens.
“So much of our time is spent in our heads - I know that real deep contentment comes from instead, feeding our hearts and our souls. I don’t grow the plants in my garden, they grow themselves and along the way, grow me too. “
