Services
Consulting | Design | Education
Our services help you avoid the pitfalls and challenges inherent in the design, development, and management of ecologically regenerative landscapes. We bring over 14 years of experience as practitioners and professional consultants, designers, and educators to help you match your goals & context with the realities of your site. Our objective is to help you achieve the greatest success and enjoyment whilst shortcutting learning curves, minimizing errors, and make the most well-informed decisions possible.
We Work on the Development of:
- Roads & Access
- Earthworks, Ponds, and Rain Gardens
- Keyline Design Systems
- Rainwater Catchment
- Fruit and Nut Orchards
- No-till Vegetable Gardens
- Herb Gardens
- Livestock Integration
- Silvopasture Systems
- Forest Farming
- Alley Cropping
- Windbreaks and Hedgerows
- Food Forests & Edible Forest Gardens
- Coppice Agroforestry
- Soil Re-mineralization
- Regenerative Soil Fertility
- Composting & Vermicomposting
- Regenerative Commercial Food Production
- Enterprise Strategizing
- Roads & Access
- Earthworks, Ponds, and Rain Gardens
- Keyline Design Systems
- Rainwater Catchment
- Fruit and Nut Orchards
- No-till Vegetable Gardens
- Herb Gardens
- Livestock Integration
- Silvopasture Systems
- Forest Farming
- Alley Cropping
- Windbreaks and Hedgerows
- Food Forests & Edible Forest Gardens
- Coppice Agroforestry
- Soil Re-mineralization
- Regenerative Soil Fertility
- Composting & Vermicomposting
- Regenerative Commercial Food Production
- Enterprise Strategizing
Consulting
Helping you achieve the greatest success with the least friction.
On-site Consultation
This is our primary service for new or existing projects. We join you at your site for an information rich site walk and discussion. We’ll outline your goals and context, identify the opportunities and limiting factors of your site, get a feel for the land, and work to address any limiting factors, troubleshoot problem areas, perform rudimentary design conceptualization, and create a list of action items. Depending on your context, this can be a standalone or on-going service or the springboard for our formal design process. Every design starts with an on-site consultation.
Pre-Purchase Site Evaluation
Looking to purchase a piece of property and want to know if it will be suitable for your intended use case, goals, and context? We can help you save time, money, blood, sweat and tears by understanding if a potential property will get you closer to your desired quality of life and goals or present significant challenges and limiting factors. Avoid type one errors surrounding access, water, soils, and more with this service.
On-going Consulting
We serve as consultants in whatever capacity is required to keep your project on track toward success. Our on-going consulting services can be performed on-site or remotely (Zoom, email, telephone, or text) depending on your needs. We aim to identify your limiting factors or logjams and help you develop the appropriate protocols for addressing them—from soil fertility, to implementation, management, and more. Whether it is making sure you have the most helpful resources and information, or educating in the appropriate practices, tools, or systems, we strive to get you beyond steep learning curves to unleash you and your site’s potential.
Soil Testing & Soil Remediation
We are passionate about helping you unlock the potential for pest and disease-free, nutrient-dense food. Our soil testing and remediation services are based on the 5 M’s of soil health (as outlined by Nicole Masters). We will analyze and asses Minerals, Organic Matter, Microbes, Management and Mindset to identify where the limiting factors in your soil and cropping systems are and create a plan for remediating whatever challenge you face. We utilize soil mineral testing, microbial biomass testing, and soil compaction testing.
What Our Clients Are Saying
We have worked with Mark and Allison for the past 7 years in our teaching garden and kitchen. The program that was started with their help was geared toward elementary school age children. The students, under Mark and Alison’s very patient and professional direction, have learned and done everything from soil to table in this program. One example I like to share is the meal that I was able to share with the kids. With Mark’s help, they were making corn muffins that they made from scratch with the corn grown, dried and milled by them, drizzled with honey from our bees. Second course was an egg frittata that they made from scratch with eggs from the chickens and roasted brussels sprouts and garlic from the garden, while drinking fresh, 100% pure grape juice that they pressed from grapes in the garden and finished with sweet potato fries also from the garden. All I can say is, where would these kids have ever learned to grow, mill, bake, cook, and eat all of this anywhere else, including in their own homes?
Design
For garden, homestead, or farm | Conceptual to Master Plan | Site Analysis & Assessment, Site Planning and more
Design For Success
Our goal as designers is to help create the most logical process for achieving your quality of life goals. Whether it be a garden, food forest, edible landscape, full-blown homestead or farm–we strive to help you figure out the most effective strategy for creating the life you dream of. We draw from our experience as gardeners, homesteaders, farmers, and observers of nature, coupled with our expertise in the technicalities of landscape design, land planning, GPS, GIS, CAD, drone mapping, and horticulture to produce a set of deliverables that will act as your roadmap toward success.
Through our unique process, honed over the past 15 years, we guide you toward a greater connection to your land, the systems and skills necessary to achieve your goals, and a set of plans that lay out your execution in an orderly and measured approach. We will give you the tools necessary to make better decisions, see your land from a whole-systems perspective, and feel empowered to make your dreams a reality.
Design Process
Our design services deliver an optimized set of deliverables, allowing you to focus on maximizing the success of your project. Our goal is to create deliverables that reduce and avoid costly mistakes (time and money), develop the appropriate site plan and systems for your context, shortcut learning curves by identifying tried and true best practices, selecting adapted and proven species and cultivars, and more.
Technically Speaking
We have developed a unique skillset as designers since we first learned to draft landscapes by hand in 2008. Today we utilize RTK GPS to create centimeter-accuracy site maps, UAVs (drones) to create highly accurate orthomosaics and photogrammetry (geographically accurate aerial photographs and elevation data), GIS to layer and process geospatial data (parcels, elevations, slope, aspect, waterflow, etc.), CAD to produce spatially accurate plans and georeferenced data that can be located and laid out using RTK GPS units, as well as an array of spreadsheets and proprietary documents that will aide you in your site development journey. Simply put, we strive to ensure that our deliverables are as accurate and functional as possible!
Deliverables That Make A Difference
Not just pretty maps & drawings: deliverables that help you understand your context, your site, and create a clear pathway towards realizing your quality of life goals.
Design deliverable packages can include:
*Basemap
*Site Analysis & Assessment
*Conceptual Design
Schematic Design
Working Design
*Species Master List & Budget
Design Resources
Phasing & Implementation Plans
and more where required.
* = baseline deliverables for any design
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Education
Learn new skills & optimize your success
Workshops & Classes
We love teaching people new concepts, practices and skills that help them become better stewards. We develop and offeri engaging workshops & classes for all skill-levels.
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Teaching & Presenting
Mark has presented at Michigan Small Farms Conference, Virginia Association for Biological Farmers Conference, taught in permaculture design courses in Michigan and Vermont, designed hands-on curriculum for K-5 students, taught hundreds of elementary students, and spoken to countless garden clubs, conservation nonprofits and other grassroots organizations.
Mark is an engaging and enthusiastic teacher and presenter who strives to break complex subjects down into easy to grasp concepts. He draws on his extensive experience as a practitioner and professional to deliver high quality presentations on topics including:
Ecological/Permaculture Design
Regenerative Agriculture and Gardening
Perennial Agriculture and Agroforestry
Edible Forest Gardens and Food Forests
Soil, Plant and Human Health
and More
Upcoming Events
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Methodologies
Holistic Management
We work with the tools and methods pioneered by Alan Savory to help clarify the whole being managed in any given context, the quality of life desired, what needs to be produced to make this a reality, and how to track and monitor to keep on course.
Keyline Design
We utilize the planning and organizational design framework pioneered by P.A. Yeomans to help create a logical and ecologically sound site layout. Our use of the Keyline Scale of Permanence creates designs that are efficient and ecologically robust.
Ecological & Permaculture Design
We meld the principles and tools from both ecological and permaculture design to guide the layout of a site, harmonize our clients’ goals with the realities of their site, and maximize the ecological outcomes while producing a yield.
Ecological & Regenerative Agriculture
Whether you call it ecological or regenerative agriculture, whether it be a garden, homestead or farm scale, the principles are the same. Our goal is to produce food within the order of nature whilst maximizing the yields of food, fiber, fodder, farmaceuticals, etc.
Ultimately we aim to:
- Minimize Soil Disturbance
- Maximize Crop Health, Nutrient-Density, and Ecosystem Function
- Keep the Soil Covered
- Maintain Living Roots Year-Round
- Integrate Livestock
Edible Landscaping
The concepts of edible landscaping expand beyond the simple placement of food plants within a landscape to encompass the creation of beautiful, vibrant, ecologically robust ecosystems that produce food for humans, habitat, building materials, herbs, fodder, and more. It’s about creating a vital living landscape of function, beauty, and ecological, personal, emotional and spiritual regeneration.