The Conservation of Land

The focus of my professional practice is the conservation of land.  I am here to restore it wherever I can.  I know in my bones that the earth posesses a highly evolved capacity to heal.  The degradation of the American landscape is easily reversible, yet  uneducated maintenance costs the homeowner and pushes the land toward entropy.

When I use permaculture to halt this destruction and restore the natural ecological evolution of a property, the homeowner stops needing maintenance, their power bill goes down, and they use less water.  I am serious about creating self-maintaining natural systems that sustain diverse forms of life.  Permaculture allows me to mimic those found in Nature, and the results are quick.

In light of ongoing rampant environmental destruction around the globe as well as destructive development and maintenance practices, I developed the following resources to help those interested in restoration ecology get a jump-start on their projects.

Resources to Jump-Start the Conservation of Land

Guild Kits

Guild Kit* is a phrase I coined in 2007 to describe a list of guilded, or companion, plants specifically aimed at making it easy for marginalized and low-income families to create perennial food gardens at home.  Each Guild Kit differs from a Permaculture guild in the sense that it is meant to be plopped down into an apartment planting strip or doorstep dirt patch following basic soil preparation, whereas in a Permaculture design guilds are built into a larger pattern of the entire landscape design.

  • In addition to supporting low-income families, Eco-LogicSM Guild Kits can also be utilized by individuals of all means to jump-start a Permaculture food forest or to learn more about permanent agriculture through hands-on experience.
  • Schools can use Guild Kits to create an exciting hands-on educational experience that adds fresh foods to the cafeteria menu
  • Ecological groups can employ use Guild Kits for restoration projects or for fund-raising

There are several different Guild Kit types available depending on you specific needs or situation.

  1. The first kit type is based on a dwarf fruit tree and is designed to augment a low-income family’s diet with perennial vegetables & fruits.
  2. The second kit type focuses on riparian restoration and can be used to heal water ways and restore precious fish and amphibian habitat.
  3. Guild Kits can be customized further to suit your unique project.

Guild Kits can be purchased HERE.

There is so much more that goes into each Guild Kit than just the foods it will produce for a family or the plant communities it sets up in a degraded natural area. Everyone will be able to enjoy the life cycle stages of the plant community within the Guild Kit, including observation of beneficial insects, flowers, and humus creation. My main intention is to help families who don’t otherwise have the means to go camping or put in a new patio.  With a Guild Kit they can gain what Nature has to offer in the tiny planting bed in front of their apartment or even a collection of pots.

Each Guild Kit contains three to eight plants that grow well together and support one another in a variety of ways. These often include:

~ structural support
~ nitrogen production
~ attraction of pollinators like butterflies & bees
~ mulch production for soil-building
~ micro-climate creation to support diverse plant species
~ specific species to discourage pest animals
~ food plants for people
~ and many other possibilities, depending on the recipe used

In some cases centered around a tree, each Guild Kit design comes with detailed instructions that illustrate how to plant and care for your Guild.

For every Guild Kit design that is purchased, I donate 10% of the money to volunteer work in environmental restoration.

Eco-Launchers

Eco-Launchers allow restoration of areas that are difficult or impossible to reach.  They can also be used to educate in a classroom or outdoor school setting.  I make them by hand and include the recipe and instructions so you can make more yourself if you run out.

Several recipes are available for different restoration projects:

  • Riparian Eco-Launchers are designed to jump-start natural reclamation of degraded and invaded river and creek ecosystems through introduction of Native plant communities.
  • Pond Eco-Launchers are to be hand placed along shorelines of degraded ponds and lakes.
  • Meadow Eco-Launchers are for dry meadow ecosystem regeneration.
  • Wet Prairie Eco-Launchers re-inject Native wet prairie areas with appropriate plant groups.
  • Forest Eco-Launchers build up the Native under story for healthy woodland ecosystems.
  • Custom Eco-Launchers are also available to suit your unique project.

Packaged sets of 50 to 100 Eco-Launchers each can be purchased HERE and shipped anywhere.

For every Eco-Launcher package purchased, I will donate 10% of the money to volunteer restoration projects.

One project to which I donated a percentage of sales was Mungi Lake in Southern California.  The water line had receded 25-50′ as a result of a brutal 5 year drought.  I spent about 8 weekends cutting Willow branches from the mature trees that had stood at the old water line and sticking them into the new water’s edge.  Each weekend I checked on those I had planted on my previous visit.  About 75% of the branches rooted and quickly sprouted fresh leaves.  I also pulled out 5 bags of trash from the area.  It was fulfilling to see my small effort make a visible difference, and the fishermen lining the nearby shore thanked me for adding needed shade for the fish in the lake as well as helping to filter the water with plants.

Note:  A few years after coming up with the idea to design specific native seed bomb recipes for diverse climates, I developed them for Green Tree, a company that offered Nature education programs to kids throughout the United States and fund-raising opportunities for non-profit groups via reforestation.

Copyright 2007, Patent Pending.