We are now scheduling Permaculture clients for 2025 in NC and Southwest VA!
Contact Us to see if we’re a good fit to work together.
Permaculture Design is a holistic system of design where we learn from the earth how to create abundant, beautiful, and resilient systems that give us food, shelter, medicine, energy, community, and healthy ecosystems.
Permaculture leaves the soil, air, water, and biological communities better off than they were. In a consciously designed permaculture system, humans are not a problem, but one of the keystone species of local regeneration.
Permaculture teaches us how to make change our ally. We stop struggling with what is and we listen for what wants to be. We then, day by day, help it happen. As we help the land heal itself and support the animals and plants around us, we ourselves become healthier and more alive.
What We Do
At Silver Branch permaculture, we see ourselves more as guides than designers. Knowing that you will be the one engaged in a long dance with the land, we are there to help teach a few good steps and better hear the tune.
On a site visit, we share some of the principles and techniques of Permaculture design that help you know how to begin and to take the best actions available.
With our deep acquaintance with the plants, we can also help suggest species that are right for your context. We apply the regenerative principles of Permaculture to work with the bigger energies at play in the land, like water, soil, wind, and sun.
Often, we provide sketches, notes, plant lists, fertility plans, and other resources to help the people we work with thrive. We don’t, however, try to make a perfect landscape blueprint, as we want to don’t want to spend dozens of hours making a perfect plan that the earth will certainly change along the way!
The Permaculture Design System
Permaculture has at its core a bundle of principles, ethics, patterns, and design processes.
Permaculture Ethics
We also hold the Permaculture design ethics as sacred and help them to inform everything that happens. The three Permaculture ethics are the following:
- Care for the Earth – in everything we do, conserve resources, regenerate the land and make places for life.
- Care for the People – all of our actions support human life in thriving – you, your family, your broader community, our great earth family, and the children of future generations.
- Share the Abundance – like the sun and rain giving without asking for a thing and like the trees sharing precious energy through their roots to other trees, we share the surplus we grow and give as much as we are able to.
These ethics set Permaculture apart. While they’re not about being perfect, they do make sure that every step we take is oriented towards the good of life.
Permaculture Principles

Permaculture designers also work with the “Permaculture Principles.” These design principles give us shortcuts to creating resilient, biodiverse ecosystems and taking actions in tune with the earth.
In a time of wildfire and flood, the principles are more important than ever. They anticipate the unexpected. Many of them, if followed, can be a great ally in working with our rapidly changing world.
A strength of the principles is that they’re simple enough to be taught to children and deep enough to study for a lifetime.
Working With Us
As Permaculture designers, we seek to be a strong ally to you and the land you are given to tend. There is nothing we want more than for you to mutually thrive.
Our clients often surprise us and themselves by knowing more than they think they know! After all, all of us originally came from people who knew how to live in harmony with land.
We would be grateful to play a part in helping you live a life closer to the earth. Read about working with us on Permaculture design and check out our Permaculture workshops.