Video Lesson Summary:

This is our last step of developing the concept design (whole farm layout). We’ve designed the water systems and the core infrastructure, now let’s look at what to do with the remaining areas of your property.

In this lesson you’ll learn how to plan your food-growing systems and functional spaces. Our primary focus here is food production, but we’ll also determine the specific functions that parts of your landscape will carry out.

Your permaculture farm or homestead has 4 distinctive zones with specific types of infrastructure, living systems and functional spaces; these are the homestead zone that corresponds to permaculture zones 1 and 2, the farming zone – zone 3, the semi-wild zone – zone 4, and the wild zone – zone 5. Certain living systems such as windbreaks, riparian buffers, road plantings traverse zones we design as networks connecting nodes.

In order to decide what to place and where, you’ll need to refer back to your goals and the site assessments.

Action Steps:

STEP 1. Grab your worksheets with the design goals and the site assessments you’ve made. (Est. time required: 5 min.)

STEP 2. Download the step-by-step guide on how to design your food-growing systems and functional spaces. (Est. time required: 5 min.)

STEP 3. Create the final layout, outlining with bubble diagrams on top of your basemap the desired land use. (Est. time required: 2 h)

• Use Google Earth to make your bubble diagrams and sketches.
• Refer to the design case study Google Earth .kmz file for an example of land use design.

STEP 4. Proceed to the final module: The Detailed Design.

M3. Downloadable materials (for offline viewing and use):

• -> Worksheets and instructions
• -> Handouts (slides and transcripts)
• -> Videos
• -> Google Earth Files

M3. Curated Resources on the Subject:

• -> Books
• -> Videos
• -> Web Articles
• -> Podcasts
• -> Vault Resources

Peer Support Discussions: