Juha Ujula

Horticulturist, forest gardener and teacher.
Based in Turku area

I have worked in arboreta, botanical gardens and several nurseries since the last two decades. A lot of my work has been involved in finding and growing new useful plants for our northern climate. My previous work was at Mustila Arboretum (National Arboretum of Finland), Turku Botanical Garden and several nurseries in the Turku Area.

I am involved in planning seed collection expeditions for the purpose of widening the variety of plants grown in Finland.
Some previous expeditions:

Slovakia, Carpathian Mts.
Poland, Arboretums and different mountain areas
Southeastern USA, Appalachian Mts.
Belarus (searching for winter hardy Walnuts, Juglans regia together with Philipp Weiss)
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania (several trips to collect hardy edibles)

I studied permaculture in the UK and with Aranya & Klaudia van Gool in 2010 and also volunteered in different Permaculture projects in the UK.
I also did the 1 year long Permaculture & Practical Sustainability course at Kinsale College, Co. Cork, Ireland in 2011-2012.
I have been involved in organising and teaching two PDC courses in Turku Area:
In 2011 I helped to organise the first international PDC course in Finland with Aranya & Mari Korhonen
In 2017 we ran a full year PDC in the same location together with other Permaculture teachers around Turku.

Currently I am teaching Forest Gardening at Livia, Tuorla - College for Land based Studies. (Since 2019- and the course is ongoing)

I also teach weekend courses on Forest Gardening and co-teach PDC and Permaculture Intro courses together with my fellow teachers.

Since 2007 I've been running The Metomaa Agroforestry Project, based in a large polytunnel/greenhouse in Rauma. The work is aimed to gain more knowledge on the variety of edible plant species that can be grown in Southern Finland. We produce exotic fruit such as grapes, peaches, mulberries and quince and also organise guided tours.

Since 2020, I have worked also for the Nut growing for the North- project, which we started together with Mustila Arboretum and Vakka-Taimi nursery.

Growing plants for Permaculture and Forest Gardens is one of my biggest interests and hopefully that will turn into a bigger business in the near future.