His parents Venie and Jack Holmgren were bookshop proprietors, activists committed to social justice, and former members of the communist party[1] who raised their children to question authority and stand up for their beliefs.
[2] On completing high school he hitchhiked around Australia, before moving to Tasmania in 1974 to study at the Tasmanian College of Advanced Education's Department of Environmental Design.
[4] This led to an intense working relationship over the next three years, with Holmgren and Mollison sharing a house and garden, putting ideas into practice and collecting useful plant species.
Holmgren wrote the manuscript for what would become Permaculture One: a perennial agricultural system for human settlements as he completed his Environmental Design studies, and submitted it as the major reference for his thesis.
[13] His ‘Weeds or wild nature: a permaculture perspective’ (2011) was published in Plant Protection Quarterly,[14] and he wrote the foreword to Tao Orion's Beyond the War on Invasive Species.
[23][24] Recognition for Holmgren's contribution as an environmental designer, educator and activist has been slow to develop after the initial enthusiasm generated by the publication of Permaculture One when he was 23.
In 2012, following the publication of PP&PBS in Italian, the environmental organisation Fondazione Parchi Monumentali Bardini e Peyron recognised Holmgren's contribution with the award Il Monito del Giardin.
In 2014, Holmgren was inducted into the Green Lifestyle Awards Hall of Fame[26] for his pioneering and ongoing work with permaculture since he co-founded the concept more than three decades ago.