By combining GPS surveying and data collection with the GIS capabilities of our existing Vectorworks Landmark software, we now have the ability to capture almost any type of spatial information (topographical, hydrological, ecological, cultural, etc.), and utilize it to more effectively integrate a client’s needs with the potential of their site.

See below to check out two of the projects we have done utilizing this technology. Please be in touch to find out how your project could benefit from these powerful tools.

(Click images for PDF download)

Client: Big Bend Hot Springs Project (Big Bend, CA)
Description: Site analysis document created as an appendix to a conceptual report for a 120 acre food forest.

Client: Atlan Center
Description: Extensive site analysis document created to inform the master planning of a 142 acre site that will host a residential community of 30-50 individuals and an educational retreat center accommodating groups of up to 100 users.

Other exciting features include:

• a communal gathering area
• tool storage
• shared composting facilities
• a perimeter deer fence that will double as more than 300 linear feet of trellis for grapes, kiwis, and espaliered fruit trees.

Future enhancements are likely to include rainwater harvesting, more space for community fruit trees, and additional garden plots to meet the overwhelming interest among the campus’ 5000 employees.

We’re very honored to have worked on such an exciting project, and are confident that it will serve as a model for edible gardens at corporate campuses and workplaces in the future.

If you’re interested in exploring how a community garden could benefit your company or workplace, we are excited to share our lessons learned on this successful project at Nike.

Over the last 4 months, we have worked with Communitecture Architecture and Planning to create a master plan for the nascent Pacific University Center for Sustainability Education, located just outside of Forest Grove, OR.

It has been an amazing and inspiring process, and we had a blast unveiling our designs at Pacific University’s annual faculty conference on Friday, August 21st.

We’re very proud of the work we delivered, and are making a sampling of our presentation boards available in PDF format for viewing. If you would like to see what we’ve been up to, check it out here.

We are delighted to annouce that Toby Hemenway, one of the foremost permaculture teacherse and writers in the world, has featured our work in the second edition of his book,  Gaia’s Garden: A Home-Scale Guide to Permaculture!

The first edition, which for the last six years has been best-selling book on permaculture in the world, is a phenomenal introduction the subject, especially for North American readers.  The second edition adds a completely new chapter on urban permaculture, a wealth of new insights, and FULL COLOR!

Here are some words of praise for the book:

“The world didn’t come with an operating manual, so it’s a good thing that some wise people have from time to time written them. Gaia’s Garden is one of the more important, a book that will be absolutely necessary in the world ahead.”–Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy and Hope, Human and Wild

“Toby Hemenway’s Gaia’s Garden will be recorded in history as a milestone for gardeners and landscapers–a fusion of the practical and the visionary–using the natural intelligence of Earth’s symbiotic communities to strengthen and sustain ecosystems in which humans are a partner, not a competitor. An amazing achievement showing how we can and must live in harmony with nature!”–Paul Stamets, author of Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World

Get a copy at Powells.com, and be sure to check out page 248!

For those of you not already familiar with what graywater, I’d encourage you to first check out wikipedia’s entry, and then see the video below in which our friend Trathen Heckman explains the graywater system installed at his home in California (where it is already legal).

If you are interested in integrating greywater recycling into your home landscape, contact us, we can help!

When: 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM March 14th and 15th, 2009
Where: Close-In Portland (exact location TBA)
Taught By: Leonard Barrett and Friends
Course Fee: $150-$90 sliding scale

If you’re wondering how to be more useful in the quest for a sustainable future on planet earth, this course if for you!

Permaculture is a system of design that anyone can use to find creative solutions to the biggest problems facing the planet today.  In this introductory course, you will gain an understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of Permaculture, as well as a number of specific skills that you can take out into the world right away to creating positive change.

Some of the topics covered in the course include:

• Urban Homesteading
• Zone and Sector Analysis
• Design Methodologies
• Edible Mushroom Cultivation
• Edible and Medicinal Plant Propagation
•  Composting

Additionally, you will take home:

• A multimedia CD loaded with resources for further learning
• A fruiting tree or shrub of your choice (olive, apple, pear, fig, currant, and others will be available)

Participants will enjoy gourmet local, organic vegetarian lunches on both days of the course.

To register now via PayPal or by credit card, please click the ‘Register Now’ link below.  If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

The workshop fee is sliding scale:

Upper-Income $150.00 Middle-Income $120.00 Lower-Income/Unemployed/Underemployed $90.00

When: 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM  March 28-29, 2009
Where: Ashland, OR (Exact Location TBA)
Taught By: Leonard Barrett and Friends
Course Fee: $150-$90 sliding scale

Sponsored by the Regeneration Project

Wondering how you can participate in land-based solutions to social and environmental crisis, without owning property?  Confused about where to start?

For all of those folks who have thought or said “I want to practice Permaculture, but I don’t have any land,” Permaculture for Renters will provide a packed toolbox of strategies and methods that can be used anywhere: on balconies, while traveling, in tiny sideyards, indoors, on rooftops, and more!

Over the two day workshop, participants will come together with diverse members of their community to engage their heads, hearts, and hands in learning a wide-range of useful concepts and techniques that they can integrate into their lives no matter who they are or where they live.

This is a great opportunity for anyone searching for a way to be more effective in creating a more ecologically and social just world.  Students, couchsurfers, renters, travelers, and even landlords will come away from the weekend feeling inspired and empowered.

Some of the topics covered in the course include:

• The Ethics and Principles of Permaculture, and how non-Land-Holders can Live By Them
• How to Create Edible Plant Micro-Nurseries to Pay Your Rent and Food-Forest Your Town
• Gardening in Small Spaces
• Mobile Container Gardens
• Plant Propagation
• Edible Mushroom Cultivation
• Guerrilla GardeningLand Access for Renters: Creating Interdependent Communities of Land-Owners and Non-Land-Owners

Additionally, you will leave with:

• Your choice of seed, nursery stock, and mushroom spawn to propagate.
• A web-based ‘virtual binder’ of readings and resources for further learning.

About the Instructor

Leonard Barrett is a landscape designer, contractor, educator, and renter based in Portland, OR.  Through his firm, Barrett Ecological Services, he has collaborated on land planning projects with some of the regions best and brightest in sustainable design, including Mark Lakeman (Communitecture) and BEAM Development.  Most recently he has been a visiting professor in the Environmental Studies department at Pacific University, teaching a 3-credit course entitled “Landscape Master Planning: A Permaculture Perspective.”

Look out for the launch of the Permaculture for Renters website this March!

Sliding Scale

Two-Day Upper-Income $150.00 Two-Day Middle-Income $120.00 Two-Day Unemployed/Under-Employed/Low-Income $90.00 Sunday Only Uppr-Income $75.00 Sunday Only Mid-Income $60.00 Sunday Only Un/Under-Employed $45.00

How did you hear about this event?

We strongly prefer that registrants use PayPal, as it’s less work for us, but if you would like to pay by another method, such as a check, please let us know via our contact form. Please note that your registration will not be confirmed until we receive payment, unless some other arrangement has been made and we explicitly state that you are confirmed.

Whether you are new to the concepts of permaculture and regenerative design, or have long been a part of the choir, we invite you to take the next step in increasing your self-sufficiency, whatever it may be.  If you would like to find out more about Block Repair, please email inquiries@barrettecological.com for more information, or to schedule a consultation.

It will take our collective intelligence and creativity to look back on this phase as a time when we successfully transitioned away from oil dependence and curbed climate change.  This is both an offering, and a call to action.  We look forward to partnering with you, our community and clients, to engage in creating more vibrant and resilient human environments during the coming years, in Portland and beyond.

Be well, and be in touch.

When: 12:00 – 4:00 PM March 7th, 2009
Where: MilePost Five Community – 900 NE 81st Ave., PDX (map)
Taught By: Leonard Barrett and Friends
Course Fee: $20-$40 sliding scale
What You’ll Leave With: Your Own Oyster Mushroom Grow Kit, The Basic Skills Needed to Grow Most Mushroom Species, Resources for Further Learning

The name says it all:  Everyone can (and should be) growing fungi for fun, fertility, and food!

In this workshop, we’ll explore various methods of growing edible fungi, and discuss how they can be integrated into your life in a way that’s fun, builds your soil fertility, and tastes wonderful with olive oil and garlic.

Our hands-on activities will show you how to grow oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus) on three different substrates: logs, straw, and one of Portland’s most plentiful ‘waste’ resources, coffee grounds.  After a little bit of talking about how mushrooms live and reproduce, we’ll help everyone build their own oysters-on-coffee-grounds grow kit to take home.

We’ll also discuss several other species and how to grow them.

Come get cozy with nature’s recyclers!

Registration for this workshop if full!

If you would like to know when we’re offering it again, please contact us and/or join our mailing list.

Here’s some classic footage of Bill Mollison from 1990.