My father, Tim Harland, who has died unexpectedly aged 65, was co-founder with my mother, Maddy, of Permanent Publications, a publishing company that specialises in books on permaculture, which is an innovative approach to regenerative land management, sustainable lifestyles and communities.
From 1990 onwards, Permanent Publications brought out more than 100 books on permaculture and related topics, as well as the quarterly Permaculture magazine. Tim and Maddy also put their belief in permaculture into practice by eco-renovating their cottage in the Hampshire village of Clanfield and converting an adjoining arable field into one of Britain’s earliest forest gardens.
Tim was born in Kiel, Germany, where his father, Patrick, was serving in the Royal Navy; his mother, Joan (nee Edmunds), was a radiographer. As his parents moved about for work, he lived in Cosham in Hampshire, Cape Town in South Africa, and then Warblington in Hampshire with his maternal grandmother, Nelly, where he attended Churcher’s college in Petersfield. At the age of 16 he joined his parents again in Norfolk, Virginia, in the US.
After a period of concerted travelling – including, at the age of 19, an overland drive to India and back at a time when the shah of Iran was being deposed and the Soviet Union was invading Afghanistan – he settled down into a sales job at a publishing firm, Milestone Publications, which was based in Horndean, Hampshire.
It was after watching Bill Mollison, one of the founders of the theory of permaculture, in the documentary film In Grave Danger of Falling Food (1990), that Tim and Maddy (nee Wood), whom he had married in 1987, realised that permaculture could enhance biodiversity, restore damaged soil and provide an abundance of food.
That year they founded Permanent Publications, which in 2008 won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise for its “unfettered dedication to promoting sustainable development internationally”. Tim, not possessing a suit for the trip to Buckingham Palace, picked one up in an Oxfam shop a few days before the award ceremony.
In 2022, Tim and Maddy moved near to South Molton in Devon, where they began eco-renovating another house and restoring a woodland. He considered himself incredibly fortunate to find himself living in such a paradisiacal environment, and continued his work with Permanent Publications there until his death.
Over the last four years of his life he had returned to his earlier daily practice of meditation. He was a kind and gentle man, and a dedicated father and husband.
He is survived by Maddy, two daughters, me and Gail, and his siblings, Nick and Kate.
