Kay Baxter

Kay Baxter (born ) Baxter is known for her work in permaculture gardening, conservation, and sustainable food production. She has written books on landscape planning, seed saving, and plant heritage and teaches courses and workshops on regenerative agriculture and gardening.

Through the Koanga Institute, she has led New Zealand’s largest collection of over 800 lines of New Zealand heritage vegetable seeds, and over 400 varieties of New Zealand heritage fruit tree and berries.

Early life and education Baxter's childhood was spent moving around the South Island, wherever her schoolteacher father could find work. From an early age she learned how to grow food to eat. “We were pretty poor, and we lived out of the garden.” Concerned with the future of New Zealand's heritage plant sustainability, she co-founded the Koanga Institute and spent the last the past 30 years dedicated to building a collection of heritage seeds and fruit trees, first in Northland, then on leased land near Wairoa in Hawke's Bay. It's 50 hectares of 100 percent organic, regenerative and New Zealand grown seeds, trees, perennials.

Selected works

Design your own orchard : bringing permaculture design to the ground in Aotearoa. Maungaturoto, NZ: Koanga Gardens. 80 pp. ISBN 9780958289436 (2002) Koanga Garden Guide: A complete guide to gardening organically and regeneratively. Maungaturoto, NZ: Koanga Gardens. 367 pp. ISBN 9780958289405 (2015)