Over the course of sixteen years, we have shaped our proven process, from the first discovery call all the way through to caretaking and ecolawn services. When setting out to start a permaculture landscape business, it was important that we developed a proof of concept that not only creates thriving ecological landscapes and empowers clients to participate in Earth’s return to health, but also sustains a thriving business.    By building lasting relationships with our clients through our consult-design-installation-caretaking process, we empower you to understand and interact with yo ..read more

Fresh Harvest recently did a customer spotlight piece with me, talking about Shades of Green, how our work intersects, and how important food is to our health, the local community, and our sense of connection and rootedness. If you aren’t familiar with Fresh Harvest, they provide home delivery of local organic produce and groceries in Metro Atlanta and Athens. Their baskets are customizable and you can add meat, milk, eggs, and lots of other farmer’s market staples.  Since 2012 they have worked to create a local food system that supports sustainable farms and reduces food and packaging wa ..read more

In a world where self-sufficiency and relationship to the land are increasingly important, transforming a conventional landscape into an urban homestead is a beautiful endeavor. Whether you have a sprawling backyard or a smaller space, there are ways to create a productive and eco-friendly permaculture space that provides food, habitat for wildlife, and a sense of connection to the natural world. We’d love to share a project with you. An in-town Atlanta client came to us with the dream of turning her urban landscape into a fully functioning and abundant homestead that could nourish her family ..read more

  Orchard of chestnut saplings with contour swales In the realm of sustainable land management, a permaculture approach seeks to harmonize human activities with natural ecosystems. At its core, permaculture emphasizes principles such as observation, diversity, and integration to create resilient and productive landscapes. One crucial aspect of permaculture design is water management, and contouring the landscape emerges as a fundamental technique with multifaceted benefits. Contouring involves shaping the land to follow its natural contours and creating swales, berms, and rain gardens a ..read more

Soil profiles change depending on your climate. However, there is a vital exchange between plants and fungi, bacteria, and other organisms in any soil type. Building soil through the addition of organic matter has numerous impacts on your garden and beyond. It is said that pre-colonization, the eastern US had upward of 14 FEET of topsoil. It is estimated that it can take between 500 and 1000 years to build 1” of topsoil in natural processes. BUT we have the tools to accelerate soil generation through our landscape management and permaculture practices.  One free and easy technique to acc ..read more

One of the many aspects of a permaculture landscape is the choice of plants that build a diverse ecosystem and meet the needs of both the land, and its human stewards. In this blog post, we’ll explore the permaculture system and how plants help to bolster sustainability, build soil health, and contribute to the Earth’s return to health.  Plant Communities: Permaculture encourages the cultivation of companion plants, which complement each other in growth and offer mutual benefits. For instance, planting nitrogen-fixing legumes alongside heavy-feeders like fruit trees helps enrich the soil ..read more

A permaculture garden is a type of sustainable and regenerative garden or agriculture system that creates lasting and productive systems, bolstered by the patterns found in natural ecosystems. The term “permaculture” is derived from “permanent agriculture” and “permanent culture,” emphasizing its focus on creating long-lasting, highly efficient, self-regenerating ecosystems that benefit both humans and the environment.   In a permaculture garden, the main goal is to create a harmonious and resilient ecosystem where plants, animals, and humans relate to the natural environment in a way tha ..read more

Permaculture is a portmanteau of the words “permanent” and “agriculture,” which points to creating lasting and productive systems that yield food, fiber, and fuel year after year. It is an ethical design science and methodology integrating human activity with natural surroundings to create highly efficient, self-regenerating ecosystems.  History & Theory Bill Mollison, a professor of Environmental Psychology at the University of Tasmania , was teaching a seminar in the 1970s about how land ownership adversely affects the balance of an ecosystem. In the audience sat David Holmgren, a g ..read more

In honor of our fifteenth anniversary, we’re reflecting on the evolution of Shades of Green Permaculture. In particular, the evolution of our team, our logo, our office spaces over the years, and our design renderings. When I started the business 15 years ago, I took on one or two projects at a time from my dining room table, hand-rendering designs and doing all of the client management and installation myself. It’s hard to believe it’s been 15 years since those days, but when you look at key milestones and how we’ve grown, the changes and triumphs, and growing pains add up to a company our wh ..read more

Do you think that an emotional connection to land or nature should play more of a role in climate change mitigation and policy-making? Part of our role at Shades of Green is to help foster a connection with the living world, especially for people in an urban center where you’re separated from that in the day to day activities of our lives. One of our big goals is to just get people outside, get them into their yard. We offer caretaking where we work alongside clients – an open invitation to work with us, learn about what we’re seeing, how to move plants around, how to harvest different things ..read more