Our Permaculture Design Work

Between Matt and Liane, we have now seen nearly 100 clients. We are grateful to have the chance to bring our experience to serve you and the land that you love.

We are currently looking to work with a small number of clients for 2025 in North Carolina or Southwest Virginia.

We are especially seeking to work with people who may be interested in committing to work together for a year including 1 visit per season, as this leads to the best results.

Working with you through the seasons gives us a much better ability to help make sure your goals are reached. It will also let us provide a lot more extra help in the form of things like custom plant lists, water and soil plans, a guide for how to work with your land, concept sketches, or whatever helps you and the land to thrive.

This can be life-changing work, so the more you make a place for it in your life, the deeper it will root!

What to Expect When We Work Together

  1. We start with a free 30 minute call to get to know each other and see if we’re a good fit to work together.
  2. From there, we have a 3-hour visit and learn as much as we can about the land and the people who tend it.  Then, together, we find the next best steps to take. We look for steps that support both the land’s long-term regeneration and give you a way to begin the transformation now.
  3. After each visit, we offer custom follow-up materials based on your needs. These can be summaries, plant lists, resource lists, concept sketches, or whatever you need to thrive.
  4. In between visits, we are there to support enacting those steps with our skills & guidance via email or scheduled calls.
  5. We keep working with you through the seasons via 1 or more seasonal visits 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.

Ways to Work With Us

Permaculture Through the Seasons

This is the strongest way to work together and yields the best results.  It is a big commitment to the land that gives you the support to make real change. It includes 4 seasonal 3-hour visits and follow-up design materials from Matt and our team.

We recommend keeping the first two visits are within 60 days to make sure things begin moving in a good direction.  The next two are usually farther apart, one per season, to help the land evolve through the year. 

After each visit, we offer custom written follow-up materials based on your needs.  People who commit to working with us for a year also receive on-going support in between visits through email or scheduled calls.

We are confident that with a full year of our guidance, you will be walking in harmony with the land on a path to seeing your Permaculture goals realized

One-Time Consultation and Hourly Help

In addition to Permaculture design work, we offer consultation work specifically to support finding and buying land for Permaculture as well as in-depth mentoring to learn to live off-grid. Though we prefer seeing the same people multiple times, in some special cases we may also offer a one-time visit for Permaculture consultation. To talk about possible arrangements and pricing for this, contact us.

Pricing

We recognize these are very difficult times for many. We charge the lowest rate that allows our business to be financially sustainable. Thank you for your support. It allows us to share this deeply needed art.

  • Our current rate is $50 an hour.
  • Site visits (one-time or seasonal) are $300 for a 3-hour visit + approx. 3 hours of follow-up materials (6 hours total). This is the minimum time we need to deliver results we feel good about.
  • We will always let you know in advance if we need additional time based on work or materials you’ve requested.
  • We ask for a reduced fee for travel based on how close you are to one of our two central locations (Chapel Hill, NC and Floyd, VA).
    • If you are far from our areas and there are other local Permaculture designers to work with, that could save you money. Please see map below.
    • We are also open to some remote consulations for people we have already visited at least once. These can be less than 3 hours.
  • If these rates do not work for you, we recommend attending one of our Permaculture design workshops which are sliding scale and can give you a deep knowledge of Permaculture to apply on your own.

Travel Distance Fee

Zone 0 – No fee for travel – Within 40 miles of Matt’s home in Floyd, VA.

Zone 1 (Red): $25 per visit – Close to either Floyd, VA or Liane’s home in Chapel Hill, NC

Zone 2 (Yellow): $50 per visit

Zone 3: (Blue): $75 per visit

Zone 4 (Outside these areas): Contact us to discuss pricing.

map of counties we work in

More on Working Together

matt digging a swale
Matt digging a 2-acre long on-contour swale and having a blast doing it. The goal was to sink hundreds of thousands of gallons per water every year, slowing erosion and regenerating a spring. Matt can help with specialized tasks like this.

Additional hourly help is available by arrangement. We don’t usually do full installation but one or more of the visits can involve working together to help you learn how to do something like plant trees, dig earthworks, set up solar, and so on.

In some cases, we can provide special implementation help, like creating earthworks with an excavator, planting the first stages of a forest garden, or other specialized tasks.

Our ultimate goal of this work is to leave you feeling confident and on the right path to work with the land yourself. Like a lot of Permaculture designers, we have moved away from drawing up a big master plan and delivering it to you to have to follow (you can read more about why here). What we will do is make sure that after every session, you have everything you need to take the next best steps to keep moving towards your goals.

Our visits are also to help you learn to see the patterns of water, soil, animals, and so on on your own land. 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. Some clients have enjoyed us teaching them about the wild plants or mushrooms they can forage on their land and even enjoyed a salad we prepared from the wild!

Ready to Work Together?

…and, check out our upcoming Permaculture workshops.