Permaculture design for your whole property
In a healthy landscape, nothing has only one job. We design the whole property so water, soil, gardens, paths, and your own footsteps work together instead of against each other.
- Good for
- Properties where the water, paths, gardens, and daily chores are fighting each other instead of working together.
- What you get
- A plan for the whole property with clear priorities, so you know what to do first and what can wait.
Design the whole, not the pieces
Most problems on a property come from parts working against each other: water rushing off one area while another dries out, compost far from the garden, the garden far from the kitchen. Permaculture is a way of designing so each part helps another.
David Holmgren, one of its founders, describes permaculture as a design system for resilient living and land use, built on ethics and ecological design principles. It isn't a style of garden. It's a way of deciding where everything goes and why.
How we work
We start with observation, the first of Holmgren's principles. Then we use two simple tools to turn what we see into a plan: zones, which place the things you visit most closest to the house, and sectors, which map the sun, wind, and water arriving from outside.
- Read slope, drainage, sun, wind, soil, and how you move around the property.
- Map where water comes from, where it goes, and where it could be slowed and stored.
- Place gardens, paths, compost, animals, and trees by how often you'll tend them.
- Set clear priorities: what to do first, what can wait, and what to skip.
Water is usually the first move
Rain is the most valuable input most properties waste. As Texas A&M AgriLife notes, an inch of rain on a 1,000-square-foot roof is about 620 gallons. Rain gardens, swales on contour, and storage can keep more of that water on your land, as long as they're placed safely away from foundations, utilities, and unstable slopes.
What the evidence says
We're honest about the science. A 2014 review by Ferguson and Lovell found permaculture's principles largely complement agroecology, while warning that permaculture writing often underplays real-world complexity. A 2024 study by Reiff and colleagues found more soil carbon, less compaction, and much higher biodiversity on nine permaculture sites in Central Europe than on nearby conventional fields, while noting the small sample. We design with that balance in mind: proven practice first, careful experiments second.
Anywhere in the U.S., with honest limits
We offer consultation and design across the United States. Whether we can install depends on the site, the season, permits, the trades involved, and who's available locally. Our fieldwork is insured through Terramorph, and when a project requires state- or trade-specific credentials, we coordinate the right licensed professionals.
How we work, in five steps
- ListenEvery piece of land comes with people attached. We sit down with you and ask a lot of questions: what you want this place to do, what frustrates you about it now, and what you'd never change.
- ReadLand is never a blank page. We walk the site slowly and more than once: where water runs and pools after a storm, where shade falls in July, what the soil is like, what's already growing, and which animals use the place.
- DesignA good design is mostly decisions about relationships. We turn what we found into a plan: what goes where, what to plant, how water moves, where people walk, and how much upkeep you can honestly handle.
- BuildTiming is half of planting. We put it in the ground, sequencing jobs and materials around the weather and site conditions, and working around the plants and wildlife already living there.
- StewardA landscape is never finished, because it's alive. We come back to see what took off, what struggled, and what didn't make it, and we adjust.
Read before you call
Sources
- What is Permaculture? Holmgren Design
- Permaculture Design Principles Permaculture Principles (David Holmgren)
- Permaculture for agroecology (Ferguson & Lovell, 2014) Agronomy for Sustainable Development
- Permaculture enhances carbon stocks, soil quality and biodiversity in Central Europe (Reiff et al., 2024) Communications Earth & Environment
- Beginner rainwater harvesting system tips Texas A&M AgriLife Today
- Water Quality Swales: Low Impact Development Fact Sheet (EM 9209) Oregon State University Extension