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Residential Design for Midwest Permaculture Home

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Below is the full design map of our Midwest Permaculture Home. Click on the picture to enlarge and zoom in on any details that interest you.

Click on Above Image to Enlarge or Save if you Like

Click Here to View a PDF of Each Layer as it Develops
or Download to your own computer by right clicking, then – ‘Save link as…’ 

We created the video below for a local-food summit which we were invited to co-host. It includes many pictures and information about our (Becky and Bill Wilson) reasons for starting Midwest Permaculture and how we designed and evolved our own home.  The blog-post that follows is a condensed version of this hour-long video presentation.

Vision and Goal
We have been slowly evolving a design for our home and business Midwest Permaculture. The vision is to turn our lawn into something that is beautiful, productive (for us and wildlife), diverse, relatively easy to maintain, and capable of building long-term fertility. Our goal over the next 10 years is to grow a significant percentage of our own food and to purchase/trade for the reminder from mostly local sources. We are well on our way.

Home Before Permaculture Design

How it Looks from the Same Picture Angle (2017)

Looking up our  Front Sidewalk 2017 – We have just over 100 useful or edible species of plants now.
One of the keys to creating this density of plantings with little use of the village chlorinated water has been our water harvesting systems consisting of swales, raingardens, berms, hugelkulturs and a rain tank. Below is a simple design illustration of how rainwater moves and is held on our property but away from the house foundation.

Click on Picture to See Enlarged View or Right Click to download to your own computer

Click Here to Veiw a .PDF of the water flows
of How the Rainwater Flows Through the Property
(Or once Again, right click to save to your computer)

Once the water harvesting system has been designed then we design for:
* Access (Key paths and walkways)
* Planting areas and grow beds
* Specific plant species – often forming compatible polyculture (guilds) in layers consisting of trees, shrubs, herbs, root crops and other dynamic plants and ground covers.

Below we’ll share some of the before and after photos and other features in our yard. Hope you find them helpful.

Front yard – year 1

Front yard – year 5

Front yard – year 10

Rain garden #1 with PDC course who dug all three rain gardens and installed our property-line berm for gooseberries and currants.

Rain garden #1 – year 2

Rain garden #1 – year 10

Front yard food forest – year 1

Front yard food forest – year 10

Front yard rain gardens – year 1

Front yard rain gardens – year 10

Backyard corner – year 1

Backyard corner – year 10

Rainwater harvesting tank – year 1

Rainwater harvesting tank – year 10

Herb garden off the back deck – year 3

Becky with one of her many peach harvests

What we do with the peaches

Aquaponics system off our front porch provides greens all summer and the enjoyment of trickling water and lovely fish
Hope you enjoyed these.

We teach all of the basic elements of how to create a yard like this in our Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) courses. Please join us sometime.

Schedule of Upcoming PDC’s Here

3 thoughts on “Residential Design for Midwest Permaculture Home”

  1. I am in such awe of your lovely system. I am so new to this and I stumbled upon you all by accident. I was trying to sell my house and looking at a house in your area. Well our house isnt selling, we will probably try one more time in the spring and then just start working with what we have. I have celiacs and permaculture is right up my ally. I love the layout you all have here, but how did you all go about deciding what was right and where to put everything? Did you map it out or did you just fly off the seat of your pants and spontaneously place things? I cant wait to come visit soon!

    1. Hi Nicole. Like with most designs, we stared out with the water flow and path systems which naturally identified the planting areas. Then we basically chose an over story species we were interested in growing and then planted an understory that would support that plant as well as give us some other kinds of yields such as food, beauty and herbs. By all means, there was quite a bit of ‘seat of the pants’ design going on…and there still is. It’s been really fun. Hope this helps.

  2. I love this! Great Job.. I am a retired Marine, looking to convert my 2 acre spread into a Permaculture haven. I live here in Waynesville Missouri.. I would like to schedule a field trip and visit soon. Please and Thanks!

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