Hannah Moloney
“I don’t have any expectations of [my daughter] gardening or helping me in the garden. I’m really clear about that. I chose to really go down that path in a deep way. She might be an accountant, and that’s great.”
“Gardening is often an inconvenience, it can cost us money and take up our spare time, but we do it anyway. We don’t know how to put words around it because it also feeds us emotionally and spiritually.”
With bright pink hair that matches her iconic Hobart home perched on a hill, many Tasmanians will recognise Hannah Moloney on sight.
A permaculture educator, community worker, activist, designer, best-selling author and TV host, she's known to many for her passion for gardening.
But growing up, Hannah thought gardening was a chore.
Back then she lived in Brisbane, where her dad ran an urban herb nursery in their backyard. She and her four siblings helped with the garden before school, after school, and on weekends.
“Gardening was very much like a job,” she says. “It was almost a burden for me growing up, something we ‘had’ to do.”
When she left home at 18, Hannah swore she’d never work in a herb nursery again. Then, within six months, she was… working in a herb nursery. By choice. And loving it.
This led her to plunge into the world of permaculture, a design system and philosophy that’s about finding ways to live sustainably. Activism had always been part of Hannah’s life, especially in her younger years, and in permaculture she found something that connected the dots between her love for activism and her love for gardening.
So, Hannah spent the next few years of her life travelling around Australia working with experienced permaculturists. By 24, she’d signed up for an educational permaculture course.
The passion practically pours out of her. “It’s not just gardening; it’s a way of life. It’s community development, it’s alternative economics, all these great things.”
Good Life Permaculture is her business. Through it, Hannah runs workshops, designs landscapes, and does collaborative projects like partnering with the City of Hobart for an edible garden tour. More recently, she was part of the biennial arts festival Ten Days on the Island, where she opened and closed the event with Time Rebel, a climate justice musical. Needless to say, it’s more than just a job for her.
At the heart of her work is a commitment towards climate justice. More specific than climate action, Hannah describes climate justice as the intersection of environmental and social impacts, based on the understanding that both the effects of climate change and the responsibility for addressing it are unequally distributed, often placing the greatest burden on communities who’ve contributed the least to the problem.
This way of thinking also shapes Hannah’s curiosity towards how people relate to place. She asks questions like: What are people doing on that landscape? How are they doing it? And why? The answers are often practical, like needing food and water, but she’s found there’s also a deeper, less tangible connection to place, a sense of wellbeing that comes from being in nature.
“Gardening is often an inconvenience, it can cost us money and take up our spare time, but we do it anyway,” she says. “We don’t know how to put words around it because it also feeds us emotionally and spiritually.”
“So, that’s a big part of why I garden. It makes me feel really good.”
Hannah believes that understanding the land, plants, and animals gives you a stronger sense of how to be in the world. It’s something she’s always striving for. Not just for herself, but for her daughter, Frida, too.
That said, she’s mindful not to force Frida into anything.
“I don’t have any expectations of her gardening or helping me in the garden. I’m really clear about that,” she says. “I chose to really go down that path in a deep way. Frida might be an accountant, and that’s great.”
Compromise everything you need to, within reason. There’s certain boundaries you don’t cross. But just keep going, otherwise we’ll just beat ourselves down and nothing will ever be good enough.
Hannah never quite fit in at school. She describes herself as a square peg trying to fit into a round hole, constantly told her life should follow one of a few predetermined paths. It wasn’t until she left school that she realised she could be anything she wanted to be.
“There are all different types of intelligence,” she says, “My particular intelligence is very DIY, and I think it’s wonderful to follow that feeling.”
That’s why she wants to give Frida the freedom to choose her own way in life. What she does hope to pass on is a strong foundation, an understanding of her place in the natural world, so Frida can make decisions grounded in those values, whatever path she chooses.
“I’ve got a strong belief in values, that one of the most radical things we can do is to unearth and articulate them and live towards them.”
Hannah’s values shape her choices rather than living life on autopilot. By thinking that way, that’s where she thinks real change begins. It’s what drives her to buy second-hand rather than fast fashion, for example.
But Hannah makes an important distinction: she lives towards her values, rather than expecting to embody them perfectly.
“I’m not interested in living perfectly in zero waste. It would be great if I could, but it would require a lot more organising,” she laughs. “Close enough is usually good enough for most things.”
She calls herself a pragmatic idealist, holding onto a vision of a better, more beautiful future, even if it's unlikely to be realised in her lifetime. So she asks: what can happen in her lifetime?
“I just started to plug that in as much as possible.”
Hannah quotes food writer Anne-Marie Bonneau: “We don’t need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly.” That’s the space she lives in.
And for the record, Hannah’s not fussed if you don’t garden, or if your garden doesn’t look like hers.
“All I care about is you voting progressively, managing your money ethically, reducing consumption and listening to First Nations Voices; they’re the top four things I have,” she says.
“Compromise everything you need to, within reason. There’s certain boundaries you don’t cross. But just keep going, otherwise we’ll just beat ourselves down and nothing will ever be good enough.”
Passing that mindset on to Frida is important to Hannah. Still, parenting hasn’t been easy. Hannah found the early years particularly tough.
“I think parenting is the hardest job in our Western culture because it’s so isolated,” she says. “We’re often left to our own resources, especially when you’re a first-time parent.”
Now on the other side of that, Hannah believes the way through is finding your own version of what works. For her, it was staying busy — running a business, teaching, gardening, designing. She also believes asking for help is vital. It’s something she wishes she’d done more of: just putting her hand up and saying, “I need help here.”
But at the end of the day, she wouldn't trade it for anything.
“I love being a parent,” she says. “I gave birth to a little friend who’s so cool, and I love her so much.”
And Tasmania has turned out to be the perfect place to raise Frida. Hannah first visited the island as a teenager on a bike-riding holiday. She loved it so much she knew she would be back. And she was. Years later, she doesn’t think she’ll leave.
“We feel very happy and very settled in Tassie. Who knows, never say never, but I don’t think we’ll live anywhere else at this stage in our lives.”
Hannah’s been paying attention to climate change for over 20 years, and she sees Tasmania as a sensible place to live. But it wasn’t fear that brought her here.
“I came here out of love. I wasn’t going, ‘I’m running away from climate change’, no. I’m running towards a great quality of life.”
“We’ve got really clean air, good water, the forest, beautiful Kunanyi. I run out the door and just have to cross the road once to get to the top of Kunanyi from here. It’s so cool.”
While some leave Tasmania in search of more work opportunities, Hannah sees it differently.
“I think Tasmania suits a certain type of person who’s keen to fill the gaps. There’s a lot of gaps down here that people could fill,” she says.
When she moved, she saw an opportunity to work in her field, because it wasn’t widely practised. She told herself she’d try and fill the gaps that can be useful to everybody.
“I love that sense of opportunity. There's a strong DIY vibe in Tasmania — ‘you can do it yourself’ — and I love that.” And did it herself, she did.
We worked with southern Tasmanian photographer Lisa Kuilenburg and southern Tasmanian writer Peter Burt for this Tasmanian story.