Paul A. Lee

Paul Lee went to college at St. Olaf and then Harvard to get his Divinity Degree and a PhD in Philosophy. He studied with great thinkers, Paul Tillich, Erik Erickso, Paul Ricoeur. He taught at MIT, Harvard, and UCSC. As an activist, environmentalist, grounded in vitalism, Paul has launched projects such as the first organic garden at a University with Alan Chadwick, at UCSC, in 1967.

In 1970, along side Gaylord Nelson, Paul helped launch the very successful national day of observance, Earth Day. In 1976, Paul & Page Smith started the California Conservation Corps under Jerry Brown’s administration, the first time as governor. In Santa Cruz, CA, Paul proposed the Greenbelt initiative to save Pogonip in 1978. In 1985. along with Page Smith, he began the Homeless Shelter Project and the Homeless Garden Project.

Currently he is writing, working on the Alan Chadwick Archive and another long-term project, the Circle Trail, making Santa Cruz an ecotourist destination. He will be teaching this Fall at Cowell College, a class entitled, Who Killed Cock Robin, or off the record, the evil of scientism.

In March 2013, with North Atlantic Press, Paul published, There is a Garden in the Mind. This book shines a spotlight on pioneering gardener and founding father of the American organic movement, Alan Chadwick, for his groundbreaking approaches to gardening, which have shaped the burgeoning locavore and self-sufficiency movements of today. In this all-encompassing and philosophical memoir, author Paul Lee recounts his first serendipitous meeting with Chadwick in Santa Cruz, California, in 1967, and their subsequent founding of the Chadwick Garden at UC Santa Cruz, the first organic and biointensive garden at a U.S. university.