The mycelium
People, projects, and ideas that connect us. And one common thread: working with the Earth.
Adaptonics is not just about plants and bottles.
Over more than ten years, friendships, encounters, and connections have developed with people and projects engaged with very different questions: health. Education. Research. Entrepreneurship. And the question of how we want to live in the future.
If you look long enough, you realize that it is really always the same question. Healthy soil, healthy plants, healthy people—this is not a slogan, but a division of labor. Some plow, others conduct research, and still others believe in young people and give them seed capital, tools, or simply a good conversation.
That is why this page is not a collection of partner logos. It is a network—told through four threads:
Learning from the Earth
Before there was Adaptonics, there were manure piles to tend, compost to turn, and mornings under star-filled skies. I learned the craft on these farms—and something no lecture hall can teach you: reverence for what grows. “The spirit is not in the books—the spirit is in the cow manure!”
Dottenfelderhof
I completed part of my Demeter agricultural training here. Dottenfelderhof near Frankfurt has been managed by a community of operators since 1968; more than a hundred people live there, and since the 1970s its agricultural school has trained biodynamic farmers.
Especially wonderful: The farm now offers a medical-agricultural study year in cooperation with the University of Witten/Herdecke, where I later studied. Some circles close without anyone having to force them.
Trantenrother Hof & Hof Sackern
Two Demeter farms from my time in the Ruhr region. Trantenrother Hof, on the city boundary between Bochum and Witten, has been managed biodynamically since 1976. Hof Sackern in Wetter was first mentioned in a document in 1343; since 1984, several families have run it together, with its own bakery, cows, goats, and closed-loop systems.
If you want to see what farming looks like when it serves not the quarterly report but the grandchildren: go there, buy some bread, and be amazed.
→ Trantenrother Hof · → Hof Sackern
Hofgut Rengoldshausen
One of the oldest Demeter farms in the world: Since 1932, this farm near Überlingen has been managed biodynamically—today covering around 200 hectares, with its own seed work and an agricultural school. A place that shows that “fit for future generations” is not a new idea, but one that has been working for nearly a hundred years.
New School Permaculture – Helder Valente
Helder was my permaculture instructor. He learned from pioneers such as Bill Mollison, Geoff Lawton, and Sepp Holzer and established New School Permaculture, a traveling school that also teaches here in Tenerife—forest gardens, soil building, design.
Much of what grows in the Healing Garden grows that way because Helder taught me to observe first and plant afterward.
Healing the Earth
Some projects are bigger than a farm. They heal landscapes, villages, sometimes entire regions—and, along the way, the people who work in them. I was fortunate to experience some of them up close.
Future Village Sonnerden
In 2020, a circle of friends bought “an entire village”—the site of the former Rhön Akademie Schwarzerden near Gersfeld. This became SonnErden: start-up work on laptops, compost in the afternoon, a cooperative instead of a business plan. In 2023, the German broadcaster hr dedicated its own documentary to these longtime friends: “Rural Life 2.0 – IT Professionals Buy a Village.”
→ Sonnerden · → Documentary: “Rural Life 2.0 – IT Professionals Buy a Village”
Sekem
In 1977, Ibrahim Abouleish began building a biodynamic operation in the middle of the Egyptian desert. This became Sekem: agriculture, schools, medical care, a university—a whole community that grew from desert sand and an intuition. In 2003, Abouleish received the Right Livelihood Award for it.
I met him in Sweden in 2010. To me, Sekem’s founding story remains the “blueprint” to this day. Abouleish also started with herbal teas. Before that, he drove aimlessly through the desert—he called it “consideration,” meaning in harmony with the stars—to find water, which he succeeded in doing on his second attempt. Today, it has become a workplace for more than 3,000 people and its own university. Along the way, Egypt’s entire cotton production was converted to organic farming.
KRMEF – Krishna Gurung
I have a close bond with Krishna, the founder of the Kevin Rohan Memorial Eco Foundation—I worked there many years ago. The foundation in the Kathmandu Valley bears the name of his son, who died at the age of seven. What Krishna and his wife Leela have built from this pain is one of the most moving responses to loss I know: biodynamic gardens, a school, a free clinic, and houses made from recycled bottles.
Krishna is considered a pioneer of biodynamic agriculture in Nepal. To me, above all, he remains a friend.
anamed – action for natural medicine
What connects us most with anamed is Artemisia annua. For decades, anamed has been teaching internationally how medicinal plants can be grown, processed, and used locally. Our connection is not a business partnership—we would call it friendship. The book "Natural Medicine in the Tropics" made a tremendous contribution to the founding of Adaptonics back then; that’s how I got the idea of making tinctures in the first place! - Thank you, Hans Martin!
Save Soil
The global campaign of the Isha Foundation is fighting for the most unglamorous and important thing of all: living soil. Without humus, there are no plants; without plants, no natural substances; without natural substances, no Adaptonics—it’s as simple as that. That’s why Save Soil belongs in this network.
And of course: Artemisia
Artemisia annua runs through everything. It has been flowering in the Healing Garden since 2014, connected us early on with doctors, botanists, and international networks—and still occupies us today. Above all, I hope for one thing in the future: more good research. Not the next grand claim, but sound questions and sensible studies.
→ Artemisia annua in Adaptopedia
People who believe in people
No project in this world comes into being through business plans. It comes into being because, at some point, someone says: I believe in you. Here are the people and places that did that for me—and that do it for others today.
Freies Jugendseminar Stuttgart
The youth seminar is part of my own story—I was there myself. A place where young people from different countries can live, learn, work, and engage with bigger questions that receive surprisingly little space in ordinary vocational training.
Today, we support the youth seminar with Adaptonics.
→ Freies Jugendseminar Stuttgart
YIP – Youth Initiative Program, Sweden
In 2010, I myself took part in YIP in Järna—the year that set so much in motion: That’s where I met Ibrahim Abouleish, where friendships began that still sustain us today, and where I met mentors who appear further down this page. YIP combines personal development with social initiative—and trusts young people to make something of the world themselves, rather than merely fitting smoothly into it.
Today, we also support the program financially. The Healing Garden of that time was already represented at YIP’s Initiative Forum in 2015. That’s where it really all began... (:
Orland Bishop, Nicanor Perlas, Edgard Gouveia Jr.
Three people who have shaped me like few others. Orland Bishop founded the ShadeTree Foundation in Los Angeles and combines healing arts, Indigenous wisdom, and youth work—he is where my understanding of what an encounter truly is comes from. Edgard Gouveia Jr. from Brazil, inventor of Oasis Games, showed me that communities can be transformed through play. Literally.
Nicanor Perlas (1950–2025) was a piece of world history: a Filipino environmental activist, driven into exile by the Marcos regime, and the recipient of the 2003 Right Livelihood Award. I learned many things from him that remain important to me to this day. More than that: he became a role model. Perlas died in August 2025.
→ ShadeTree Foundation · → Nicanor Perlas (Right Livelihood)
Evidenz Foundation
When Healing Garden was still more of an idea than a company, someone gave me €5,000 in seed capital. Given, not lent—that is the point. The Evidenz Foundation in Basel works with this different understanding of money: It supports young people who want to bring something entrepreneurial into the world and invests its capital where it serves that mission—including in Demeter-certified tea cultivation in India.
Reinhard Mertin & Mandev Singh – Early companions on the journey
Reinhard Mertin, an entrepreneur from the Ruhr region with roots in steel construction, was one of our earliest investors—someone who looked not at returns, but at the person. Mandev Singh, a physician in Herdecke and a friend of Reinhard, actively supported me in the early years, making contacts and opening up his network when much was still an idea, an experiment, and improvisation.
Friðhu – Dr. Fritz Helmut Hemmerich
Fritz is one of the people without whom the story of Adaptonics in this form probably would not exist. We have known each other since the early days of Healing Garden; many conversations from back then—about salutogenesis, self-regulation, and herbal medicine—are still preserved as videos today.
→ More about Friðhu and his connection to Adaptonics
Armin Steuernagel – Purpose
Armin and I studied together in Witten—and spent many a night debating in the “Karma Round.” At 22, he founded the organic food manufacturer Mogli; today, through Purpose and the Steward-Ownership Foundation, he works to ensure that companies no longer serve as prey for their owners, but instead serve their purpose. Steward ownership—that is the structural answer to the question that concerns us all here: Who actually owns what we build?
Centro Eridanos, McGrinsey & Nico Stisser
The Centro Eridanos here in Tenerife has been dedicated to salutogenesis for many years—a part of the environment from which many of my thoughts emerged. Johannes Jähnke helped us navigate all the internet-related work of the early years with McGrinsey—less a service provider than a big brother. And at some point, Nico Stisser gave our wild project a face: our logo smith, now the founder of Keinachtsbaum.
→ Centro Eridanos · → McGrinsey · → Keinachtsbaum
Entrepreneurship Foundation
In 2014, I presented the Healing Garden in the context of GründerGarage. What continues to interest me about Günter Faltin’s ideas on entrepreneurship is the notion that entrepreneurship can be a creative activity: developing an idea, trying it out, and bringing something meaningful into the world. The Healing Garden was exactly such an attempt. Adaptonics emerged from it.
Science & the Future
We want to be especially precise here.
A personal connection is not a research collaboration. A university one attended is therefore not automatically an “Adaptonics partner.”
But science is part of the network that we want to consciously continue developing over the coming years.
Witten/Herdecke University
I studied there—the connection is initially a personal and biographical one, not an institutional partnership with Adaptonics. Nevertheless, Witten/Herdecke fits into this network: health, entrepreneurship, personal responsibility, and thinking across disciplinary boundaries—all of these already played a role there. And the fact that the university now offers a joint academic year for aspiring doctors with Dottenfelderhof shows that these questions are no longer a niche topic.
Maybe it will lead to something more someday. Maybe it won’t. Both are fine.
SMGP – Swiss Medical Society for Phytotherapy
In Switzerland, there is a personal connection to SMGP, which has been committed for decades to establishing phytotherapy as a recognized component of modern medicine—with continuing education for doctors and pharmacists and a strong commitment to scientific standards. Exactly the kind of bridge between plants and evidence that we want for our topics.
There is currently no formal partnership and no joint study. Whether anything comes of it remains open—that is precisely why SMGP appears here under “Science & the Future” rather than under “Our Partners.”
A network has to be alive
This page is explicitly not finished.
The network is meant to grow—not by collecting as many logos as possible, but through genuine collaboration: joint newsletters, conversations and interviews, reciprocal visits, support for educational projects—and, wherever it makes sense and is possible, scientific research.
Maybe it will lead to things we can’t even imagine today. That’s ultimately how the Healing Garden and Adaptonics came about, too.
Do you somehow fit in here?
Are you working on a project, research question, newsletter, or initiative where you see a connection to Adaptonics?
Then write to me. It doesn’t have to become a “partnership” right away. A good conversation is a pretty good start.
Your Healing Garden Adaptonics :)