Permaculture Design

Permaculture design is an unfolding process that helps us create systems which mimic the healthful patterns and relationships found in nature, yielding abundant, beautiful, and resilient food, shelter, health, energy, and community.

Permaculture leaves the soil, air, water, and biological communities better off than they were. In a consciously designed permaculture system, humans are not a problem, but one of the keystone species of local regeneration.

In Permaculture design work, we stop struggling with what is and we listen for what wants to be. With patience and practice, we re-enter deep relationship with our wild and human communities. Rather than surviving by trying to control all the variables, we build literal and cultural soil.

Small forest garden homestead in North Carolina
Our second off-grid permaculture homestead. From the doorstep, a forest garden unfolded step-by-step. The forest shades and protects the home, the outdoor kitchen channels a breeze that passively cools the house, the roof catches rainwater that is used to water the plants. The house is heated with firewood from the same trees that can be cut again and again. Everything extra from the kitchen ends up back in the soil. Little ponds catch the extra rainwater and fill up with singing frogs, and every morning a cardinal wakes us up by tapping on our south-facing window.

What to Expect When We Work Together

  1. We start with a free 30-60 minute call to get to know each other and see if we’re a good fit to work together.
  2. From there, we visit and learn as much as we can about the land and the people who tend it.
  3. Then, together, we find the next best steps to take. We look for steps that support both the land’s long-term unfolding and give you a way to begin the transformation now.
  4. When needed, we are there to support enacting those steps with our skills & guidance.
  5. We keep working with you through the seasons to help you and the land continue to evolve together and connect you to support resources, workshops, and community.
  6. You will have a totally renewed and enlivened relationship with tending the land you live with and ten thousand beautiful things we can’t possibly anticipate will happen as a result of you doing what you love to do most.

More on Working Together

We ask for an hourly rate based on our years of experience as permaculture designers in the Piedmont. We don’t ask for a contract or large payment up-front.

In most situations we suggest making a long-term commitment to the project for best results, and each visit will also be helpful on its own. This can be life-changing work, so the more you make a place for it in your life, the deeper it will root.

We do sometimes work with people who just want help with one aspect of their backyard or home. Feel free to ask us about any kind of work.

Though we prefer in-person support, we offer video call “visits” for some types of help once we’ve gotten to know you and the land well.

More Notes on How We Work

For every design, we ask you to be deeply involved in the process.  We are not landscape architects.  We don’t want to look at your land and draw up a big design that tells you (or a landscaper) what to do!  You’ve been given a place to care for and you will come to know more about it than we ever can.

The design and consultation work we do is meant to help you immerse into what is already alive in your land and yourself and, from there, find the next best steps to take, one at a time.

We help you see emergent patterns of plants, water, animals, people, structures, etc., and to help you deepen into the art of regenerating your land by meeting your needs. 

No one can know more about your land than you and the other people who live there; but we can be of tremendous help as as guides along the way.

Learn more about why we no longer focus on making a master plan or contact us to work together.