PINA Board Member, since Dec 2020
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Jane is a regenerative community developer, designer, and entrepreneur. She applies her permaculture skills to the collaborative design of land and community-based projects, right livelihoods and businesses.
Jane started out in the municipal and not-for-profit sector, helping establish dozens of gardening programs and projects. In 2007 she launched Garden Jane to offer permaculture coaching, education and design services for people and not-for-profits that want to grow food gardens and healthy food communities. She co-founded Hoffmann Hayes in 2015 to provide urban agriculture and holistic design services to businesses, agencies, and people who are planning, building, and developing communities.
Wherever possible, Jane’s approach is to engage fellow designers and end-user communities for multiple years on a project, moving from design to implementation with community skillbuilding and uptake. Jane and her team focus on helping developers to build community infrastructure, such as food gardens. They then collaborate with the people who come to live in the building or area to develop skills in community food growing and project stewardship. Recently Jane has been engaged on multi-disciplinary teams charged with designing the development of master planned communities, an urban food hub, commercial foodscapes, a university campus, a community housing rooftop farm, and a municipal agriculture strategy. She is also a mentor with the Women’s Permaculture Guild Permaculture Design Course.
Some of what Jane has helped to establish includes 25 projects in high and low rise buildings, a Permaculture in Ontario map, the Erin Mills Farmers Market, an Erin Mills Community Food Hub, the Mississauga Urban Agriculture Network, the City of Toronto Children’s Garden Program and High Park Children’s Garden, the City of Toronto’s Community Garden program, National food garden programs for Evergreen. She has a B.A. from University of Toronto, a Masters in Environmental Studies from York University, and is a certified Permaculture teacher.
