Save Bees, Save Water, Save Money
how?
Sure, you could spend 5 figures on a landscape overhaul, but you can also achieve the same level of health, abundance, and resilience with little to no financial investment! There are resources all around us, waiting to be turned into soil, propagated or reused, if you know where to look. Our Resource Inventory Analysis Tool will help you know what assets may be right under your feet, waiting to be put to good use!
With a step-by-step approach, it’ll all begin to click. As the saying goes, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” Even if you aren’t a gardener, or haven’t kept anything alive…ever, our Archetype-to-Element Design Method, demystifies permaculture, and makes building a complex ecosystem approachable and simple.
I help my clients with those same problems every single day.
And if you're like any of them, you've probably believed some of the same myths.
good news!
You wish there was a way to have a beautiful, ecological garden in an simpler way.
You're tired of feeling like your dreams of self-sufficiency and sustainability are out of reach.
You're done trying to watch YouTube to figure out what to do or where to plant, only to find out it doesn't work!
You have too much mowing to do, and you want your weekends back!
You need to know that you're having a positive impact with your landscaping choices.
You want a healthy, beneficial, and productive landscape.
You’re ready to grow so much food! You want chickens, food forests, and all-things-permaculture. It’s important to you to know where your food comes from and to be as self-sufficient as possible.
You’ve been gardening for years. Maybe you’re retired now and ready to devote more time to being outside, gain some new skills, and head into this next chapter feeling inspired!
You love nature! You’re in it for the native plants! You want to help conserve and bolster pollinator and songbird populations, and you’re always on the lookout for beautiful birds, bees, and butterflies.
You live in an urban or suburban setting and you want your yard to be sustainable, but aren't sure where to begin. Maybe you live in an HOA or you’re aware of the harmful effects of conventional landscaping and are curious about sustainable alternatives. You’re ready for your landscape to reflect your values.
You want a healthy and organic outdoor space for your kiddos and fur-babies. Spending time in the garden with your family is meaningful. You want your children to know where their food comes from and feel connected to nature.
You already work in the design/build field–whether you’re a designer, a landscape architect, or a contractor–and you want to gain some new skills and fresh perspective to bring more value to your clients.
You just bought a new place or you’re ready to finally focus on your landscape, and have a blank slate full of possibilities. You want to know where to start and to make sure your efforts are worthwhile with a realistic phasing plan and priority-informed budgets.
You feel disconnected from nature and want to be outside more. You’re a newbie to gardening, but ready to roll up your sleeves, and dig in with some guidance.
...and so much more!
How to care for your garden
Implementation Tools
Draw a Master Plan
module 7
Veggie Gardening
Invasive species Removal
sourcing plants
ESSENTIAL Plant Knowledge
module 6
Planting BED Preparation
Composting
Choosing Plants for soil health
Amendment techniques
module 5
Rainwater Harvesting
Earthworks
Drought resistance
DIAGNOSE DRAINAGE ISSUES
module 4
Understand material choices and how they impact drainage, soils, and more.
Hardscaping Materials
Determine what is a “must have” and what is an “if there’s space/time/money” item, so you can move forward with a phase 1 plan that works for you.
Essential Needs
Consider your family’s needs that will be accommodated by the design, such as play areas, seating, compost, materials storage, pathways, dog-friendly areas, and more.
Functionality
Identify the essential elements for your dream landscape for a gorgeous and inviting outdoor space.
PintErest-worthy Aesthetics
module 3
Identify priority areas and issues so you know what to tackle first.
Define Your Priorities
Put pen to paper and accurately mapped the existing conditions of your site including water flows, light, soils, vegetation, and infrastructure.
Analyze your site
Identify certain landscaping conventions that have a negative environmental impact so your decisions moving forward will be in alignment with the ecoparadise you dream of building!
SCALE YOUR BASEMAP
Clearly articulate your project goal, and have a realistic idea of phasing, timeline and budget.
Clarify your goals
module 2
The skills to build your garden in alignment with your values, and a process that can be applied to any landscape you tend to in the future.
Values-Aligned Gardening
Define your project roadmap, so you’ll know where you’re headed and how you’re going to get there.
MAKE A Project Roadmap
Identify certain landscaping conventions that have a negative environmental impact so your decisions moving forward will be in alignment with the ecoparadise you dream of building!
Conventional Landscaping Problems
Discover the 3 key pillars of a regenerative landscape: an introduction to a permaculture perspective on soil, water, and plants.
What is a regenerative landscape?
module 1
Implementation Tools
PHASING PLAN
Master Plan
CONFIDENT Plant Choices
Building Soil TECHNIQUES
Water Diagnostics
Defined Priorities
Site Analysis
SCALED Basemap
Articulated your project goal, and have a realistic idea of phasing, timeline and budget.
CLEAR GOALS
The skills to build your garden in alignment with your values, and a process that can be applied to any landscape you tend to in the future.
Values-Aligned Gardening SKILLS
An understanding of how conventional landscape choices negatively impact the planet and contribute to climate change.
awareness of harmful practices
Water Diagnostics
(A $349 value)
Our most utilized companion plantings for building soil, habitat, beauty, and food
Includes varieties we recommend, bloom times, culinary and medicinal uses, ecological functions, soil moisture, light requirements, and more
Native and/or useful plants for USDA Hardiness Zones 5-10
Monthly small sessions where we can connect live, and have great discussions about the course material to deepen your learning
An opportunity to share videos and pictures of your site, so I can help you troubleshoot and keep moving
(A $1197 value)
Get your questions answered by me and my team in between coaching sessions
Join current and past students of RBB via the course forum share resources, ideas, tips, questions and tools.
(A $127 value)
PDF guide with gorgeous hand-drawn diagrams of our top construction methods, including paths, patios, planting beds, edging options, earthworks and rainwater harvesting systems
Planting diagrams for trees, shrubs, and perennials, so you know exactly how to prepare your plants to thrive
(AN $847 value)
7 virtual site visits looking at real-life examples of course topics
See actual case studies illustrating the mechanics of the build-out
Learn solutions that can be applied to your own difficult site conditions
(A $457 value)
Size cisterns and earthworks appropriately
Know you're maximizing the amount of water you can save to weather times of drought
(A $197 value)
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By the end of the 14 days, you’ll have had the opportunity to gather your tools, articulate your Project Goal, and define your Project Budget. You’ll have also scaled a basemap of your site and mapped out your site’s existing conditions. All before making a final commitment.
That being said, if you don’t feel totally confident and motivated to plan the garden you’re dreaming of, reach out, show us you’ve put in the work, and we’ll refund your investment.
Full details here>>
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I founded Shades of Green in 2008. Since then, our team has grown to a staff of nearly 20, and we have worked with over a thousand clients who are applying permaculture across contexts.
I am passionate about leading a purpose-driven business that actively creates a healthier world for our children every single day. I love seeing my daughter graze on the plants in our yard, knowing they are chemical free and full of nutrients you can't get at the store.
My roots are in building. I earned my General Contractor's license directly after completing undergraduate work at the age of 20, and began training as a stone mason where I fell in love with the way intelligent design responds to the natural world. I have nearly two decades of experience in building off-grid water systems, landscape construction, and integrated farming systems. I serve on the Pine Lake City Council and spend lots of time outdoors with my husband, Aaron, our daughter, and our rambunctious pup, Peanut Butter.
The entire course is go-at-your-own-pace. When you join the Regenerative Backyard Blueprint, you get instant access to all of the lessons and modules. They are recorded so you can watch (or rewatch) on our own schedule. There are 7 video-based modules, each containing between four and ten bite-sized (read: 10 minutes or less) video lessons, in addition to many skill tutorial videos. I made them this way so that you can watch when you have a moment, and don’t need to carve out hours at a time to slog through the materials! I want you to take your time, to implement as you learn, to watch and re-watch as many times as you need! You can take five days or five months! Everyone’s journey through the Regenerative Backyard Blueprint will look a little different and that’s a-ok!
You can apply the patterns of working with water, soil, and plants to any climate. A few of the water strategies and plant palettes we discuss will be most applicable to USDA Hardiness Zones 5b-9a, or analogous temperate climate zones, but I will teach you how to go about assembling a plant palette regardless of your climate.
Yes! You will have live access to me through our group coaching sessions, and also have an opportunity to connect with other students facing the same challenges. Additionally, you can ask questions in the RBB Community Forum, to which my team and I will respond regularly.
You get instant access to the course materials and bonuses when you sign up, and it’s your for life! If you join now, it’s yours forever. And, we update the content periodically, so that includes any future updates!
How does doing this course and implementing it myself compare to hiring someone to do the design and install work for me?
If you went the professional-design route, you would likely be looking at a price tag of $4,000+ for the design work, and then the cost of implementation, which depending on the size and extent of your installation could be anywhere between $10,000 to $80,000+! Many of our students want to better understand how to sustainably manage their landscapes, but aren't capable of doing the physical labor. With RBB, since you craft the plan, and understand how it works and the issues it’s addressing in your yard, you can decide what you are able to do yourself (like buy the plants, or amend the soil with compost tea), versus when you’re better off enlisting someone’s help (like building patios or raingardens). Knowing what to do and why means you can move forward with a local landscaping company if needed, without sacrificing the regenerative understanding you’ve gleaned from the class.
Absolutely! This is the same process and pattern-to-details approach we use for all of our clients, whether 1/10th of an acre in the city, or a 100-acre farm in the country.
No. The Regenerative Backyard Blueprint will begin with the basics, and layer on more complexities as the course progresses. And, I'll be here to support your learning journey for any questions that arise!
Absolutely! I teach many methods that you can do for free or nearly-free. A small budget won’t stand in the way of making a big impact, and I’ll show you how!
Yes! In addition to teaching you low-to-no-cost methods to begin your garden, what you learn in RBB can be applied to any landscape you steward in the future, and you have lifetime access to the materials.
Permaculture is a portmanteau of the words “permanent” and “agriculture” that points to creating lasting and productive systems that yield food, fiber, and fuel year over year. Permaculture as a design methodology can be applied to any system, land-based or otherwise. How permaculture is applied changes depending on the context. Fundamentally, permaculture seeks to integrate human needs and activities with the needs and yields of natural ecosystems. For urban/suburban dwellers, this looks like three primary focus areas: restoring the water cycle, building soil fertility, and cultivating productive and native plant communities.
RBB is not a Permaculture Design Certification. After teaching 14 Permaculture Design Certifications, I created this course because I have seen too many students get overwhelmed by theory and stuck in "analysis paralysis" mode. As opposed to a theory-heavy PDC, the Regenerative Backyard Blueprint takes the most relevant aspects of a PDC, combined with the experience of working with thousands of real clients on projects, and teaches you actionable, refined techniques you can go out and do today, taking years of guesswork and trial-and-error out of the equation.
Yes, when you finish the class, we can provide you with a certificate of completion. Some students use these for continuing education credits.
When I was young, I witnessed my parents being poisoned by the senseless use of pesticides and herbicides, and I have committed my life to creating viable and gorgeous alternatives to toxic and wasteful landscapes.
In these times, we should take every chance we get to take care of ourselves, our families, and our communities. Being in Nature is proven to increase our health and well-being, meaning more happiness, and lower stress and anxiety.
I’ve experienced first-hand what it feels like to be a student of permaculture, wondering how it actually applies to my own yard. And I’ve gone on to create a tried-and-true process that my team and I have applied to thousands of projects. I am excited to share this framework with you so you can feel confident and empowered to build your vision, and I’m here to support you along the way.
Should you choose to accept my invitation, I guarantee that the time you spend in RBB will leave you feeling confident and prepared with the skills you need to create your very own regenerative and resilient ecoparadise.
I look forward to meeting you inside the Regenerative Backyard Blueprint.
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