Toby Hemenway Quotes & Sayings

Agriculture is the process of turning eco-systems into people. — Toby Hemenway

Permaculture gives us a toolkit for moving from a culture of fear and scarcity to one of love and abundance — Toby Hemenway

It is only our limited time frame that creates the whole "natives versus exotics" controversy. Wind animals, sea currents, and continental drift have always dispersed species into new environments... The planet has been awash in surging , swarming species movement since life began. The fact that it is not one great homogeneous tangled weed lot is persuasive testimony to the fact that intact ecosystems are very difficult to invade. — 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

I like to talk about the idea of "design without design," where ... we're creating the conditions for the things that we want to see happen rather than trying to force a particular set of outcomes. — 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 average yard is both an ecological and agricultural desert. The prime offender is short-mown grass, which offers no habitat and nothing for people except a place to sit, yet sucks down far more water and chemicals than a comparable amount of farmland. — Toby Hemenway

A culture disconnected from wild nature becomes insane. — Toby Hemenway

The plants we've chosen will collect and cycle Earth's minerals, water, and air; shade the soil and renew it with leafy mulch; and yield fruits and greens for people and wildlife. — Toby Hemenway

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