RESIDENTIAL PERMACULTURE DESIGN

Now in Southeast Michigan, Roots & Sky Ecological Design has been working with residential clients and community gardens and farms since 2015. Based on years of experience in each region, Roots & Sky offers design consulting services in communities adjacent to Baltimore, Detroit, and Chicago.

Roots & Sky offers whole-site designs for beautiful bountiful Edible Landscapes and wildlife habitats. We help you identify natural resources, increase self-sufficiency, decrease stormwater runoff & use of fossil fuels.

Our Residential Permaculture Design Consultation begins with an interview process that guides you through sharpening your site observations skills and identifying your goals for the space.

  • We then come to you and map your space, looking at the interactions of elements like sun, rain, wind, existing trees, slope and soil.

  • After a period of research, a report and design are drafted.

  • At the end of the consultation, you receive a completed design emphasizing on-site opportunities for nutrient cycling and best practices for achieving your desired yields.

  • In addition to the design you receive a customized handbook based upon your interests and goals. This report includes selected plants, purposes, procedures and materials, as well as recommended resources for sourcing materials and continued learning.

Here are some ideas of potential needs and desired yields from previous designs:

  • growing your own food from trees, shrubs, bushes, vines, perennial and annual herbacious plants and groundcovers, roots, and mushrooms.

  • growing culinary herbs and medicines (wildcrafting teas, tinctures, salves and liniments)

  • growing craft supplies (cordage, dye plants, basketry, soap, candles, stakes, waddle fence-building materials)

  • addressing your site’s storm water issues through earthworks (rainbarrels, cisterns, swales, raingardens, ponds)

  • attracting wildlife through meeting year-round needs for food, water and shelter (birds, pollinators, bats, amphibians, reptiles)

  • consecutively blooming gardens, shade gardens, native plants, and deer resistant plants

  • working with walnut trees: creating a juglone-tolerant food and medicine forest garden

  • “only native plants” food forest garden

  • dog- and child-safe plant recommendations and garden designs

  • children’s forest school discovery garden

Customized designs can be any size, from small patches to entire lots.  While we love empowering people to embrace a DIY approach, we are also available to help with any phase of getting your garden going. Whole yard designs can be implemented in phases while working within your budget, and you’re more than welcome to work alongside- which is a fun way to continue learning together. 

Over the years, Roots & Sky’s Permaculture Design Consultation and observation training has worked with homeowners, community spaces, urban farms, and agroforestry projects in the Mid-Atlantic, Midwest/Great Lakes, and Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts regions.

REGENERATIVE DESIGN APPROACH Shrinking our carbon footprint to minimize our harmful environmental effects is critical. But what if our human impact can be regenerative? …to leave the environment better than we found it? What would this look like? Rewilding abandoned industrial areas and city lots. Inviting nature back into our shared spaces through creating a habitat for beneficial insects, birds and amphibians. Preparing a first entire meal from things grown solely in your own garden. Sharing your experiences, skills, plants, inspiration and yields with neighbors.

We can each effect a positive change in the world around us.