Quotes from Toby Hemenway

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

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

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.

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.

The average yard is both an ecological and agricultural desert.

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.

On a visit to a hardware store I heard a man ask, What can I get to kill all the bugs in my yard? I nearly began shrieking.

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.