Simple Permaculture Design: How to Grow More Food With Less Work

This page may contain affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Learn more here.

Do you want to grow more of your own food while spending less time and energy in the garden? Permaculture design can help you!

Permaculture design is a great tool to help you grow more food in less space…

…while using less of your precious time, energy, and money, too!

What is Permaculture Design?

Permaculture uses indigenous growing practices and techniques gleaned directly from nature to grow beautiful and abundant ecosystems.

When I first heard about permaculture gardening, it just made complete sense to me to replicate nature in my garden and on my homestead. That doesn’t mean that traditional gardening is bad. Not at all. 

I know plenty of people who use traditional gardening methods (with organic gardening practices) and enjoy an abundant garden every year.

But this kind of gardening does require more attention from the gardener. Permaculture gardening aims to reduce the amount of work it takes to grow food and improve sustainability by creating systems that resemble nature.

A Permaculture Approach

For generations people lived by hunting & gathering and nature provided a perfect “garden” from which they could eat. Nature always balances itself out. You never see large areas where everything is dead, pest-ridden, or plagued by disease (unless humans were involved). 

Bill Mollison, the grandfather of permaculture, recognized how perfect the ecosystem was in a rainforest in Tasmania and decided there must be a way to design systems that function just as well. Permaculture was born. 

Benefits of Permaculture

At its core, permaculture is about designing garden systems that work with nature, not against it. Just think about a forest or a wetland—no one is out there watering the trees or spraying for pests, yet everything thrives. That’s because nature creates balanced ecosystems where every element supports something else.

That’s the goal with permaculture: to design closed-loop systems, where everything on your homestead plays a role—giving and receiving in a way that keeps the whole system running smoothly.

Here’s an example of how this works on my own homestead:

🐓 Chickens + Compost = Less Waste, Healthier Soil 🌱

I keep a compost pile right in my chicken and duck run. That way, instead of managing separate scrap buckets for the birds and the compost, I just bring everything to one place. The birds happily dig through it, eating what they want, and whatever they leave behind continues breaking down into compost.

That compost then goes straight into my garden beds, feeding the soil naturally. Sometimes, I even let the chickens live directly on an unused garden bed for a season—they clear out pests and weeds while fertilizing the soil for the next year.

And what about all those extra weeds, spent plants, and never-ending zucchini? They go right back to the birds as free food.

The result?

• Less chicken feed to buy
• Less time spent maintaining the garden soil
• Healthier, more self-sustaining systems all around

This is just one small example, but it shows how a simple permaculture design can save time, money, and effort—while making your homestead more resilient and abundant.When you start thinking in permaculture loops, your whole homestead starts working for you instead of you doing all the work for it!

How to Design Your Permaculture Homestead

So, you’re intrigued by permaculture design—but how do you actually get started wiht the Permaculture design process?

First, it helps to soak up as much knowledge as you can. Books, free online resources, and courses are all great ways to learn.

If you’re looking for a straightforward approach that won’t take months to work through, my Simple Permaculture Design course walks you through the essentials of designing your own backyard space in a way that’s practical and doable.

But no matter how you learn, the key is developing a permaculture mindset—one that helps you see your space as part of a sustainable, interconnected system. That’s a big focus in my course, and it’s something that will make all the difference in how you design your homestead.

A great starting point? Dive into David Holmgren’s 12 permaculture principles—they’ll help you understand how to work with nature instead of against it.

Once you start thinking through that permaculture lens, the first step in designing your space is simple: observation. Spend time outside. Notice where water flows, where the sun hits, how the wind moves, and what the natural patterns of your land are.

From there, you can map out your space, considering elements like water systems, microclimates, zones, and sectors. This helps you place things in a way that creates a closed-loop system—where everything supports something else. Think about beneficial insects, how animals like chickens or ducks can play a role in the garden, and which plants work best in your climate.

You can learn these concepts in a permaculture design course (mine makes it simple!), or you can go down the rabbit hole of researching each topic separately—whichever fits your style. Either way, once you start thinking this way, you’ll never look at your homestead the same again!

Permaculture for Small Spaces

Many people don’t think they have a big enough property to grow a significant amount of food…

However, I have grown enough fruits and vegetables in just 100 square feet to make a significant dent in our grocery budget throughout the growing season…

Add in high-priced items like honey, fruit, eggs, and meat and the dollar value of the food you grow at home explodes!

The amount of food you grow on your Backyard Permaculture homestead will depend on a lot of factors, including your climate, but it’s totally doable to grow thousands of dollars worth of food on a relatively small property. 

Here in New Hampshire, 100 sq ft of space can bring in at least $1000 worth of food (for the year).  

And you can grow thousands of dollars worth of food only spending 10 hours a week caring for your garden and animals.

How is this possible?

You have to be smart about how you use your space!

And I’m not just talking about space-saving tips such as succession planting and square-foot gardening. I’m talking about designing a space that uses every square inch of space to its full potential.

For example, taking advantage of microclimates to grow plants that otherwise wouldn’t grow well in your climate…

…or noticing what is already growing well on your property so you can use that knowledge to choose the best plants for each location on your property…

…or strategically including livestock so they help improve the land, care for the garden, and eradicate pest issues while eating from the land…and THEN become food…

Growing more food in less space is possible because of well-thought-out backyard permaculture designs!

I walk you through how to do it all in my Simple Permaculture Design Roadmap course.

Once you have a well-thought-out design, your garden, and homestead will run much more easily and with SO MUCH LESS WORK from you! 

Grow $$$

Many people quit gardening because it becomes too costly and time-intensive to manage a garden…

…especially if itonly produces a few zucchini and tomatoes yearly.

But there are better ways to grow food that don’t cost huge amounts of time, energy, and money.

Permaculture design creates a blueprint for growing food in a way that is easy and abundant. So anyone can grow at least some of their food — right in their backyard!

And it’s totally possible to grow thousands of dollars worth of food on a small property (1 acre or less) each year when you know how to take advantage of your site’s strengths.

What’s Inside the Simple Permaculture Design Roadmap Course?

The Simple Permaculture Design Roadmap is a great resource for homesteaders looking to manage their space better, grow more food, and reduce their overwhelm.

This course includes:

7 Easy-to-Follow Lessons on…

• permaculture basics so you know the how and why behind your design choices
• how to build healthy soil, use water systems, choose the right plants, and attract beneficials
• how to use animals in the garden
• how to create a homestead design that works with your needs and your site’s strength
• how to make homesteading easier by “stacking functions”
• ways to plan out your design so you won’t have to change something later
• more!

Hands-on Guidance via…

• Base Map creation video – I’ll show you an easy way to get a scale map of your property.
• 1Walk through design video – Follow along as I show you how I plan a permaculture homestead in video format.
• 4 planning worksheets – no need to start from scratch. These show you exactly what to do!

The course includes an overview of the important aspects of permaculture design and implementation. If you want something that’s easy to follow, this course is for you!

Bonuses!!

You also get these bonuses:

• 4 Bonus Trainings on topics such as site observations, nutrient cycling for healthy soil, prepping trees for planting, choosing plants, and more!
• Implementation Planner – this planner will help you to avoid those feelings, stay on track, and feel confident that you are making progress!
• Plant Guild Ideas – use these created-for-you plant guilds in your design for faster planning. Perfect for any size space!

Who Is the Simple Permaculture Design Roadmap for?

I created this course because I saw how much easier homesteading was for me after designing my homestead with permaculture principles in mind.

But I also know that permaculture design certification courses are expensive, take a lot of time, and may be overkill (and expensive!!) for people who are just looking to improve their homestead.

In just one weekend you can learn the basics of permaculture design so you can start implementing changes on your homestead. These changes will improve your site’s health and production while saving you time and energy.

Learn More Here