Toby Hemenway quotes

Toby Hemenway was a renowned permaculture expert and author, best known for his groundbreaking book "Gaia's Garden." He was a leading voice in the sustainable living movement, advocating for regenerative agriculture practices to create sustainable food systems. Hemenway's work emphasized the importance of designing ecosystems that mimic nature to promote biodiversity and resilience. His teachings have inspired countless individuals to adopt permaculture principles in their own lives. Learn more about Toby Hemenway's legacy and contributions to the sustainability movement.

I’m going to argue here that the most accurate and least muddled way to think of permaculture is as a design approach, and that we are often misdirected by the fact that it fits into a larger philosophy and movement which it supports. But it is not that philosophy or movement. It is a design approach for realizing a new paradigm.

- Toby Hemenway

Yet soil is miraculous. It is where the dead are brought back to life. Here, in the thin earthy boundary between inanimate rock and the planet's green carpet, lifeless minerals are weathered from stones or decomposed from organic debris. Plants and microscopic animals eat these dead particles and recast them as living matter. In the soil, matter recrosses the boundary between living and dead; and, as we have seen, boundaries-edges-are where the most interesting and important events occur.

- Toby Hemenway

When you are doing work of value, people will support you in a variety of ways, not just money.

- Toby Hemenway

Vegetarians may be appalled, but much of gardening is actually raising animals: the tiny ones under the earth's surface.

- Toby Hemenway

The most accurate and least muddled way to think of permaculture is as a design approach, and that we are often misdirected by the fact that it fits into a larger philosophy and movement which it supports. But it is not that philosophy or movement. It is a design approach for realizing a new paradigm.

- Toby Hemenway

Permaculture is not the movement of sustainability and it is not the philosophy behind it; it is the problem-solving approach the movement and the philosophy can use to meet their goals and design a world in which human needs are met while enhancing the health of this miraculous planet that supports us.

- Toby Hemenway