Eric Toensmeier

Eric Toensmeier is a permaculture educator and writer whose work focuses on perennial crops, agroforestry, and climate-conscious food systems. Paradise Lot, written with Jonathan Bates and published by Chelsea Green in 2013, records their transformation of a damaged tenth-acre property in Holyoke, Massachusetts, into a densely planted urban food forest. The project combined more than two hundred edible plants with a greenhouse, water garden, poultry, and ecological methods for fertility and pest control. Its value comes partly from candor: the authors describe failed experiments and revisions alongside successful design choices. Toensmeier had already written Perennial Vegetables and co-written Edible Forest Gardens with Dave Jacke, giving the narrative a substantial horticultural foundation. Yet Paradise Lot is also a personal account of friendship, changing households, and long attention to a difficult place. It shows how technical knowledge becomes useful through observation, patience, and repeated adjustment on a remarkably small plot.