It’s with much sadness that I inform our readers of the passing of one of the world’s great permaculture writers and teachers. The author of Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture and The Permaculture City: Regenerative Design for Urban, Suburban, and Town Resilience, Toby Hemenway also taught at Portland State University, and was Scholar-in-Residence at Pacific University and a field director at the Permaculture Institute. He also edited Permaculture Activist magazine from 1999 to 2004. Hundreds of thousands of backyard gardeners have benefited directly or indirectly from Toby’s helpful advice.
Toby was a deeply intelligent, wise, and gentle man who will be missed greatly. He spent his last years in Sonoma County, California, where Post Carbon Institute is headquartered; though we met a few times and had some memorable conversations, busy schedules and illness kept us from getting together nearly as much as I would have liked.
Early in his career Toby earned a degree in biology from Tufts University, then worked as a researcher in genetics and immunology in academic laboratories at Harvard and University of Washington in Seattle. This education and experience grounded his permaculture work in rigorous scientific understanding and methodology. But his vision and motivation were deeply informed by an ecological awareness rooted in a profound love of nature.
Toby’s wife Kiel has set up a crowdfunding site to help with expenses; news and messages can be posted there, too: https://www.youcaring.com/tobyhemenway-718641
