Why "proven"
Much permaculture writing celebrates successes and quietly drops failures. Photos of swales and hügelkultur beds circulate without dates, soil tests, water budgets or costs. That gap is what skeptics point to, and they are often right to.
We think the core ideas hold up, and that the field needs to show its working. So the design tool measures before it recommends, every report lists its data sources and limits, and the case study library will publish costs and failures alongside results.
"Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labour."Bill Mollison
The lineage
The method draws on a short list of practitioners whose work is documented and whose ideas can be tested on the ground.
The Scale of Permanence
Yeomans' organising idea: plan the most permanent features first. In order — climate, land shape, water supply, roads and access, trees, structures, subdivision fences, soil.
Climate comes first because you cannot change it. Land shape is next because changing it takes heavy machinery. Water is the most permanent thing a landholder can shape, and it constrains everything below it. Soil comes last not because it matters least but because deep, living soil is the result of getting the other seven layers right.
Mollison's principles in the tool
Yeomans gives the order of work. Mollison's design principles — from Permaculture: A Designers' Manual — shape the advice within each layer. (The widely quoted list of twelve principles beginning "Observe and interact" is David Holmgren's, from 2002; we credit each where it belongs.)
| Principle | How the tool applies it |
|---|---|
| Relative location | Advice is stated as relationships: storage above the house, roads beside channels, tree belts beside water lines. |
| Each element performs many functions | Tree recommendations ask what else each planting can do — shelter, fodder, fuel, habitat, fertility. |
| Each important function is supported by many elements | Water plans call for more than one independent source. |
| Efficient energy planning | Zones by visit frequency; sectors for sun, wind, fire and flood; slope so gravity moves water. |
| Using biological resources | Animals, cover crops and trees do work that would otherwise need fuel or bought inputs. |
| Small-scale intensive systems | Start near the house and expand only what works. |
| Edge effect | Pond margins, hedgerows and woodland edges treated as productive ground. |
| Attitudinal principles | The flagship recommendation applies "least change for the greatest effect". |
Inside the tool
Terrain. The tool downloads public elevation tiles for your boundary plus a buffer, builds a square-cell elevation model (about 3–5 m cells for typical US properties), and computes slope and aspect. It then fills small pits, routes water downhill cell by cell to map drainage lines and ridgelines, and traces each primary valley floor upstream. Where the floor gradient increases sharply, it marks an estimated keypoint and draws the contour through it as the estimated keyline. It also flags low, flat or enclosed ground where cold air is likely to pool.
Climate. Long-term monthly rainfall, temperature and frost-day normals are pulled from NASA POWER for your location and used to classify the climate (Köppen–Geiger) and pre-fill the climate step.
Soils. In the US, the tool intersects your boundary with the USDA soil survey (SSURGO) and reports the mapped soils by area, with texture, drainage class and hydrologic group.
Report. Your answers and the measurements are combined into recommendations for each layer of the Scale of Permanence, a single flagship first step, and a phased plan. Reports can be printed, saved as a file, or shared as a link — nothing is stored on our servers unless you send it to us.
Data sources
- Elevation: AWS Terrain Tiles (Terrarium format), compiled from USGS 3D Elevation Program data in the US and SRTM and other public sources elsewhere.
- Climate: NASA Prediction Of Worldwide Energy Resources (POWER), climatology API.
- Soils: USDA-NRCS Soil Survey Geographic Database (SSURGO) via Soil Data Access.
- Address search: OpenStreetMap Nominatim and Photon. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.
- Imagery: Esri World Imagery.
What it won't do
- Replace a site survey. Keypoints and keylines from public data can be off by tens of metres.
- Design dams, spillways or grading to engineering standards, or tell you what needs a permit.
- Choose plant varieties for your exact microclimate.
- Give legal, water-rights or zoning advice.
What it does do is put your land through the same sequence of questions Yeomans and Mollison asked of theirs, with real measurements attached.
Proven Permaculture is a project of Soil Solutions LLC, a permaculture and regenerative land management practice in Northern California. For design help, see the contact page.