Meet the Team — 2025-2026

Karen Hewitt

Role: Committee member and the Local Group Representative (Transition Tamar)
Location: Tamar Valley

What inspired you to get involved in permaculture?

At first I loved the symbiosis that Permaculture had with the natural world, and also how it was welcoming to everyone regardless of their current skillset in regards to the sliding scale of self-sufficiency; but the more I came to know about it, the more it absolutely inspired me with the possibilities for total systemic social change – and that’s what stuck.

What’s your favourite permaculture principle and why?

Value the Margins. We are not just talking hedgerows and the biodiversity they foster, we are promoting and listening to those who have historically been repressed, oppressed or ignored. A society is only as good as how it treats its most vulnerable.

What motivated you to join the committee, and what do you hope to achieve?

As Transition Tamar is a Local Group of Permaculture Tasmania, we need someone to sit on the Permaculture Tasmania Committee to be that point of connection between the two entities, and ensure communication and accountability; as Convenor of TT it is probably easiest for me to perform this role. Permaculture Tasmania supported us to get going and to meet some of our startup and ongoing costs, so there is a debt of gratitude there too. And it also would have been a real shame if the organisation had folded and left the home of permaculture without a permaculture-related networking body.

On a personal note, when my daughter and I relocated here, we turned to the local Tamar Valley Permaculture Tasmania group to find our tribe, and met some wonderful people and made some lasting connections – so it’s a bit like paying that forward as well. From a TT point of view, we want to work in close connection with our revitalised “parent” body (the initial committee sprang from a PT bookgroup), to jointly realise our vision for Launceston and the Tamar Valley region to become a connected & resilient community through sustainable living, localised food production, circular economy and regenerative development. It doesn’t hurt that in the process we get to talk a lot about growing lovely veggies in local community too

What’s one fun fact about you or something you enjoy doing outside of permaculture?

Apart from the obvious food gardening, I am endlessly fascinated with our world and how everything came to be organised like it is (the sooner we can understand that, the sooner we can change those bits that don’t work for everyone).

I am still not growing straight carrots – despite being awarded a 2020 partial PT scholarship to enable me to do so by taking my PDC with the amazing Jo Dean – but I have come round to the fact that straight or kinky (like they tend to grow on my rocky site despite raised beds ), carrots taste the same.