In 1981 I started to specialise in biodiversity aspects of Permaculture, education, design, implementation and community development, with Michel. He had set up an experimental food forest inspired by a Fukuoka's Natural Farming under a canopy of leguminous Acacia species.

Before that I was teaching in the formal educational system.

In 1986 Michel and I founded the Australian Seed Savers’ Network to conserve traditional varieties of useful plants to home gardeners. The public sent us thousands of samples of seeds that we tested and multiplied in our extensive vegetable gardens.

In the early 1980s Michel met Bill Mollison at a weekend Permaculture course in Bellingen NSW. At the time Bill was shifting from Tasmania to Tyalgum near us in Northern New South Wales. Over the ensuing fourteen years he frequently visited our subtropical gardens. We exchanged countless species of planting materials while Bill lived near us.

From the early 1980s we attracted weekend crowds in our gardens. Bill co-taught with us short weekend courses, attracting curious cattle ranch farmers and hippies, challenging them, and entertaining crowds. At night we listened to his amazing stories of his life. We were absolutely fascinated.

At the same time, besides metamorphosing bare paddocks on red laterite into hugely diverse fruit and vegetable terraces, we worked the media to drive home our seed message for agricultural biodiversity conservation. In 1986 we officially launched Seed Savers and shared seeds we produced with everyone. As far as we were concerned it was all for free.

Repulsed by the chemical industry acquiring seed companies and formal gene banks , we were developing gardener-based maintenance and conservation seed systems without long-term formal gene banks. See details in Projects. It was Bill who coined our motto: “Preserving the Genetic Basis of Tomorrow’s Food”.

Now we continue to host Seed Savers in our one-acre suburban Permaculture gardens with 800 perennial species. We are situated in Byron Bay, a small coastal town in Eastern Australia, latitude 28° south.

In the late 1980s and 90s we taught eighteen Permaculture Design Certificate courses in Australia and other countries such as South Africa, Cuba, UK and Palau in Micronesia. In 1992 we proudly received the Permaculture Community Services Award from Bill Mollison for services around the world.

We learnt to multiply thousands of varieties both in our gardens and with gardeners around Australia. This gave us the background to write and publish The Seed Savers’ Handbook (1993), The Local Seed Network Manual (2004) and Seed to Seed Food Gardens in Schools (2007).

From our work with tribal subsistence farmers, we produced in 2008 “Our Seeds”, a one-hour documentary on seed issues for the people of the Pacific; it has audio tracks in English and also Pigin, and subtitles in English and French. In 2009 we filmed “Our Roots”, a one-hour documentary for the French International Centre for Research in Agronomy and Development (CIRAD), in English and French.

From the mid 1990s we travelled to deliver training in seed saving, advise and help start community seed networks in thirty eight countries. See seedsavers.net/our-global-reach

We have developed a multi-pronged approach with community seed mapping, seed exchanges, short-term seed banks and local and bioregional seed networks. People in these groups meet and eat together, collect, multiply and freely redistribute seeds and other propagules. We also give training toward small-scale seed enterprises.

And finally we look forward to work with you, fired-up, bright people in your community organisations.

Quality production of local seeds: how to

Require assistance to produce multimedia presentations. Based in Byron Bay, Australia