In the global forest of permaculture and kindred networks, a giant has fallen. Dan Palmer is dead. Rather than old growth, he was in his prime at 47 with deep roots and spreading canopy. From the days facilitating Permablitz, which helped inexperienced permies and householders try their hand at designing and doing together, to co-creating the Very Edible Garden (VEG) consultancy, construction and education business with colleague Adam Grubb, and beyond into Making Permaculture Stronger with Holistic Decision Making and Living Design Process, Dan was, to maintain the metaphor, forever reaching for the sun while maintaining mycelial connections to old growth mentors and emergent saplings, supporting all in his warm embrace.
I first met Dan at mutual friend’s 30th birthday party in 2002*. I recall him as a young bright eyed academic from Monash who made a strong impression on my teenage son. But it was some years later, well after he caught the passion for permaculture through a PDC with Mollison and Lawton, that I got to know him more. I already had a fun, productive and deep partnership with Adam Grubb focused around retrofitting the suburbs and future scenarios, so it was amazing to find another such relationship with Adam’s closest business partner and friend.
As well as being a deep thinker and conceptual explorer, Dan’s boyish enthusiasm for everything and everyone drew people together and brought out the best in them, whether that was on a course or at a party. I felt the exhilaration of seeing the network connections he was building in our bioregional community, something I hadn’t felt so intensely since the 1990s when permaculture colleague Ian Lillington was doing the same. That Dan and so many others in those networks were a generation younger than the permaculture pioneers spoke to a maturation of the movement that included the children of the pioneers.
Quite early on I saw how Dan was constantly searching for the next insight on a road to continuous improvement and innovation. While VEG was the vehicle for much of that insight and energy, once experimentation and innovation transitioned into proven practise and productivity, Dan’s dissatisfaction with his design process keep driving him forward. In the process of working with Rowe Morrow in Uganda he met Amanda, his life partner. Their marriage under a giant oak tree in Castlemaine and children born at home seemed to cement their connection to Central Victoria, but the pull of Dan’s fertile (and moist) home territory (and family) in Aotearoa was a strong one that saw them move back and forth several times.
Through Darren Doherty, Dan took on and dove deep into Allan Savory’s Holistic Decision Making and then, with rediscovering Christopher Alexander’s Pattern Language, he became increasingly critical of what he saw as the mechanistic nature of most permaculture design. As he wrestled with whether to dump permaculture as a failed paradigm, we spent more time together discussing design process as the weak link when it should be the strong trunk of permaculture. That tree metaphor again because, tempering all the abstraction that both of us loved, there were always the trees to plant, prune, nurture, love and care for in the garden, on the farm, out in forest and down the creek.
Perhaps because I was so interested, rather than offended, by his critique of permaculture, and never tried to hold him to the “noble cause”, he started to ask more questions, read and reread my work to gain a deeper understanding of the origin and evolution of permaculture design process. While this attention was heartening I saw this as just how Dan threw himself whole heartedly into everything and his genuine interest in what everyone has to offer. What was best of all was that he wasn’t guru hunting. It seemed the deeper his understanding of my work, the more it drove forward his own theory and practise.
Following my own experience of master-apprentice relationships, especially Mollison and Tane, I had several close, productive and heart-felt collaborations with mostly younger colleagues, but my relationship with Dan Palmer was unique. We crafted new iterations of the 4-day Advanced Permaculture Design course, documented my reading of landscapes, (which grew organically into the film currently still in production), and interviews that kicked off his recording of design process with leading permaculturists on Making Permaculture Stronger. Through these and other discussions I realised that Dan not only grasped my work more completely than most, but that his own work had the potential to well exceed the import of my own struggles with design process. I was aware that not all colleagues were as excited by what Dan was unearthing, and some of their critiques resonated with my own doubts. But overall I was mesmerised by his journey and how many people he helped through both Holistic Decision Making and Living Design Process.
But with all of this, Dan was juggling an awful lot of balls including the ones he recognised and articulated as glass ones, such as family. Rough living conditions through a very wet winter, Covid and its discontents and the state of the world were all weighing him down even though he always presented an optimistic face.
Even though I saw Dan as a close colleague and friend, I never pushed beyond that persona to see the troubled soul and, by all reports from those closer to him, it was hard to get beyond it. The Dan Palmer persona was too good to be true, with depression and internal contradictions just part of the story of another fallible human, like the rest of us. That he got to a point where all the pressures and expectations closing in on him (mostly of his own making) were too much and he took his own life, was staggering to come to terms with for so many who thought we knew him well. That he helped so many to make better decisions, and yet couldn’t use the tools he taught to avoid the abyss, might seem to undermine the value of those tools. In life Dan Palmer taught us so much about how to live a full life. In death he continues to do the same by showing the fragility of life, reinforcing the necessity to live each day as if it were our last – and best. Beyond that we are learning not to be hard on ourselves when we fail. Those of us who were inspired and nourished by him feel diverse obligations to both support those closest loved ones left behind, and to help maintain, curate and extend his legacy through permaculture and kindred networks.
* I found this email from Dan that suggests our first meeting was some time earlier. Memory is a tricky beast.
David Holmgren
Melliodora
Winter, 2022
18 thoughts on “Remembering Dan Palmer”
A touching memorial letter for Dan Palmer. I am a relative newcomer to the Permaculture Pond, although, the water level has gone well passed my toes and I am heading towards the knees deep level, and have taken a brief doggy paddle across the Eastern Corner of Australian Based Permaculture, when, last month, I visited as many Permaculture Centres, Intentional Communities and Eco Villages, as would have me, to start putting myself out there, and demoing my new area of study, Dark Field Microscopy for both Regenerative Soil and Live Blood. This venture was a huge success in my eyes, especially for someone like me, who is just starting out.
I can relate to the heaviness Dan Palmer felt at the brokenness of our current world and it is the reason I ended up on this very path. Stories like Dan’s are a big part of my ‘WHY’. It is my hope that through my efforts in the study of these interconnected disciplines, I can bring lasting hope to the now ‘burdened’ aware. I aim to show them that there is more than just faint hope for their future, but there is both light and beauty immerging from the cracks and crevices of the world, that are uniting, and taking a stand against the tyrannical corrupt systems of the past century. It rests in our hands and although we may still have battles ahead, our triumphs will have very powerful positive ramifications, across the world now, and for the generations to come. Dan’s loss is a tragic one, yet highlights just how vital this calling of ours is, as we are the messengers of truth in a very dark world.
I may well be the founding member of Australia’s new Regenerative Microbiological Citizen Scientists Movement, and it has certainly been an incredible 18 months, which started when a friend loaned me one David and Bill’s early books!
Connected as I am now with many amazing like minds, Ian Trew, Matt Power, and Bob Sample, to name but a few, we all are intentionally taking back the control of our own lives, and encouraging others to do the same, by doing this we are co-designing a better a future for all life.
I will be making the journey from East Gipplsand to Castlemain for your Monday event, over the weekend, and I hope I have the honour of meeting you soon.
Much Love,
Chrystal Carter
PDC from Ian Grew Noosa Forest Retreat
Rengerative Soil and Soil Microscopy, and Advanced Permaculture Student Online from Matt Powers
Holographic Blood and Terrain – from The Bigelsen Acadeny
Thank you for this David. I am sorry for your personal loss and grateful for your words – it takes strong plain language to give expression to such a tragedy.
Although I did not know Dan personally, I am dismayed by his death.
Soo shocked and saddened to hear this news…his life is a loss to us all…l do hope that other writers/thinkers are able to pick up the pieces of Dan’s important work, and help keep moving it forward…a wonderful memorial to him, his thinking, and his work.
Thank you David.
I’m looking forward to sitting with & listening to you Su, Beck & Rowe at Monday nights group hug of support.
Meg xo
So sad to hear of Dan’s passing! I love his passion and his interviews asking probing questions. As he would say ‘trying to get to the essence.’ Thoughts and prayers for his family and friends. He will be missed!
A beautiful tribute to an inspiring soul… thank you David.
I first met Dan at Dehesa Felix whilst participating in Darren Dohertys Regrarian PDC in 2014, and again in 2015 at the Permaculture Convergence. It was a privilege to be in his Advanced Permaculture Training held at RESEED Penguin where he generated amazing positivity and creativity as a teacher. His voice and energy will be missed by many.
Thank you for this expression David. I’ve followed Dan’s work since early on in his Making Permaculture Stronger interviews and my thinking around design has been forever effected. WE had communicated online, but I always hoped to happenstance meet him when I was at Melliodora.
Although Ruth and I did not know him personally, we have been quite effected by his death. His impulse of pushing the boundaries of wholistic intuitive design processes will live on in me, and the many many others he has impacted. As does the reminder that grief work, and expressing that which is really moving in us below the surface, in a safe space, is so important in our lives. Thank you.
Thank you David for such a faithful distillation of your relationship with Dan and making sense of his death. I never met him but in such tumultuous times he was a voice that inspired hope and joy and I was devastated by the news of his passing. Of all the news of passing people I have not met, this one has rocked me to the core .
Dear David,
thank you for this memorial! I knew Dan only from a single podcast epidsode he invited me to. This conversation and a couple short emails were enough to bring me really close to him and I always hoped I would one day meet him in person when again traveling to the other side. It is so sad to hear about his conditions and I mourn for this wonderful soul. My love goes to everyone who he was close with!
We had the privilege of attending a 2 week residential Permaculture Design Course run by Adam and Dan at Yandoit Victoria. We visited David and Sue at Melliodora and other properties as part of the learning process. It was enlightening, fun and life changing and the food was bloody good. As a multi-disciplinary health worker, I try to understand mental illness. I know the rates of male suicide in NZ and Australia and it is very distressing. I had a hunch there was a lot more to Dan than met the eye, but never that this would eventuate. Which is why suicide is so horrible and impactful, no matter who it is. We’ll miss your energy and accumulated wisdom Dan. My thoughts are truly with those who are “left behind”; those who knew him and have loved, learned and laughed alongside him.
David you’re definitely honorable in hinting to the struggle with Permaculture as a ‘design’ philosophy for human/land interaction.
One of the vulnerable pit falls with designing landscapes to be more productive and complex than they naturaly are, is that the human element is so over-represented. To the degree of the increase in productivity is the same in complexity. The design process is often very insular isolating and complex for the human mind – the design process can solve alot of problems but it can also create them as well (problem is the solution is the problem again). Do our minds become slaves to the design and complexity elements of Permaculture, have we overemphasised this and as a result lack some engagement with our hearts. The “live every day as it is the last” juxtaposes the “7th generation philosophy”. As a designer/builder myself I live very closly by the 7th generation philosophy and as result spend little time in the “every day as the last” way. I’ve spent with my parnter and home educated son the last 7yrs designing/building/maintaining from scratch a small 2acre Permaculture designed homestead to which point I can say we often feel exhausted and overwhelmed by the measure of our undertaking. We need some more honest discussion on this I feel, as the Permaculture movement so often these days is unrealisticly interpreted as the solution to all the world’s problems – is it? Or are we missing something? Permaculture should nourish our bodies mind and soul, if this is not happening maybe we’ve missed something…
I respect what you’ve written here… Thank you
We will also miss you dan , hope Ure enjoying plenty of Bunya nuts .BG
This was really beautiful, thank you!
Condolences on this significant loss. Readers, Please take this opportunity to learn more about the illness of clinical depression. It is much more than a low mood. There are medications, psychotherapies, and Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes that can be helpful. For some, even these don’t alleviate suffering, but most people are able to benefit. Take good care.
Not so much connected to social media & the constant information storm, I just heard this bad news – “making permaculture stronger” was one of my main sorces of info and inpiration in recent years, and I´m shocked and also very sad about Dan´s passing – It´s not easy to come to terms with the paradoxes of life (and death), through Dan´s contributions to the regenerative and permaculture-related networks al allways connected with the sentitive nature of his own personality, and I have much compassion for him, and more even for his family and friends –
what a loss !!!
This information has numbed me in a way I don’t know how to deal with I came across Dan’s work through your work David Ji, I might be wrong but reading Landscape undoubtedly reinforced in me the want to be one with the land.
Carol Sanford and her work brought me back to Making Permaculture Stronger, 2 weeks after Dan took his life. I feel numb in a new way, just found it today.
I have come across this eulogy when I searched for Dan’s email address, as I wanted to introduce him to a friend in Melbourne who is wanting to create a permaculture garden. I was so shocked – still shocked – to learn that my friend has died. My heart has a great weight on it.
I first met Dan while he was at Monash University, bright-eyed, as he is described above, and a force of nature. He spoke with such enthusiasm (as he kneaded sourdough bread) about his disillusionment with his degree, because he had discovered his passion – permaculture – and I watched in awe as he tossed aside everything to throw all his energy into the future of the world. He set up permablitzes across Melbourne, and I went along to several, enjoying the wonderful warm, rich, inclusive community he was actively building. I had never before, and never since, come across anything like it. On the day we met, I believe he gave me some sourdough culture, which I failed to make good bread with, but that started my awareness of food as something that is alive.
Dan was kind enough to accompany us to India, Kolkata, to learn about, and teach, permaculture principles, in rural West Bengal. He was wonderful company, generous, open-minded, curious. He was a natural teacher, and I remember the children flocking around him, they and he bare-footed, as they discussed chicken coop rotations.
Dan Palmer, may you rest in peace, in a most beautiful and endless garden. Your departure has left a large hole in the earth.