This is the lesson where it all comes together. You've watched your land, mapped its zones and sectors, built soil, caught water, planned a garden and chosen your animals. Now your family draws one plan that holds all of it, and a schedule to make it real.
A good site plan isn't a fixed blueprint. It's a living document that you'll redraw as you learn, but it keeps every decision connected, so the pieces help each other instead of competing.
- 1Follow a simple design process from observation to a finished plan.
- 2Read a complete permaculture site plan and explain why each part is where it is.
- 3Check your own design against ten key questions.
- 4Break the plan into phases you can build year by year.
- 5Present the plan as a family and keep it up to date.
The design process
Permaculture designers use several step-by-step methods, with names like SADIMET and OBREDIMET. They all follow the same basic path, which your family has already been walking.
Observe
Sun, water, wind, slope, soil and what's already growing. Your base map and land journal.
Analyze
Zones from your daily life and sectors from outside. Your two tracing overlays.
Design
Place soil, water, garden and animals where each does the most good.
Phase and build
Order the work by what matters most and what you can afford.
Tend and adjust
Watch what works, change what doesn't, and redraw the plan each winter.
A complete sample plan
Here's how every lesson might come together on a gentle, south-facing acre. Study it as a family before you draw your own. Point to each element and ask: why there?
| Element | Why it's there | Lesson |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · House | Zone 0, at the center, with south windows for winter sun | 2 |
| 2 · Kitchen garden | Zone 1, in full sun just south of the house | 5 |
| 3 · Herb spiral | By the kitchen door | 5 |
| 4 · Compost | Between the kitchen, the coop and the garden | 3 |
| 5 · Chicken run | Zone 2, beside the garden with a gate between them | 6 |
| 6 · Rain garden | Catches the roof's overflow, 10+ ft from the house | 4 |
| 7 · Rain tank | At the downspout, overflowing to the rain garden | 4 |
| 8 · Orchard on swales | Zone 3, three level swales on the upper slope catch runoff for the trees | 4 |
| 9 · Beehives | At the orchard's edge, entrance facing away from paths | 6 |
| 10 · Woodland | Zones 4 and 5, left mostly wild | 2 |
| 11 · Pond | At the low point, with a protected overflow; fenced for little ones | 4 |
| 12 · Windbreak | Along the north and west, against winter storms | 1 |
| 13 · Driveway | Reaches the house without crossing the garden or pond | 2 |
Look at how many things touch each other: the roof feeds the tank, the tank feeds the rain garden, the swales feed the orchard, the orchard feeds the bees, the coop feeds the compost, the compost feeds the garden. A beautiful homestead is mostly a web of good relationships.
Check your design
Before you build anything, test your draft. Check each item honestly against your own base map and overlays. Anything you can't check yet is a chance to improve the plan on paper, where changes are free.
Does your plan pass the test?
Build it in phases
No one builds the whole design at once. Start closest to the house and with the things that make everything else work: soil and water. Each year, push outward.
Zone 1 and water
Kitchen garden beds, compost, herb spiral, rain tank and rain garden, mulch basins for any existing trees.
Animals and swales
Chicken coop and run, swales on the slope, first orchard trees and the windbreak planted small.
Bees and the pond
Beehives as the orchard starts to bloom, the pond if you need it, more fruit and nut trees.
Let it grow
The trees fill in, the windbreak shelters, the soil darkens. Your work shifts from building to tending.
Start this week
Big plans can stall. Choose three small things your family can do in the next seven days, like starting the compost pile, sheet-mulching one bed, or setting a rain barrel under a downspout. Momentum matters more than perfection.
Keep the plan alive
- The base map and both tracing overlays
- The final site plan, in color, with a key
- The phase list with target years
- Soil test results, rainfall figures and frost dates
- Your land journal and garden logs
Pick three or four spots on the land and mark them with a stake. Take a photo from each spot, facing the same way, every season. In a few years, these photos will show your family how much the land has changed, and how much you've done.
Each winter, when the garden rests, take out the binder as a family. Review what worked, redraw what didn't, and choose the next year's projects together.
Draw your family's permaculture plan
Bring together everything from this course into one finished plan, present it to each other (or to grandparents or friends), and celebrate by planting the first piece of it.
You'll need
- Your base map and both overlays
- Notes and worksheets from Lessons 1–6
- A large sheet of good paper or poster board
- Colored pencils or watercolors, and a ruler
- One tree, shrub or perennial to plant
Do it together
- Lay out the base. Trace your land, north arrow, slope and existing features onto the big sheet.
- Place every element from Lessons 3–6, using your zones and sectors to decide where.
- Number and key it, like the sample plan, with a short "why it's there" for each.
- Run the design check above and fix anything that doesn't pass.
- Make the phase list for Years 1 to 5, and choose three things to start this week.
- Present it. Each person explains one part of the plan in their own words.
- Plant something from the plan together, and take the first photo-point pictures.
Little designers
- Color the plan and draw the animals and flowers
- Present their favorite part of the plan
- Help dig and water the first planting
Older designers
- Draw the plan to scale with a legend
- Write the phase list with costs from the calculators
- Lead the presentation and answer questions
Frame the finished plan or keep it in the binder. Photograph it for your progress record; it's the portfolio piece for this whole course.
A place that grows more generous every year
You started this course by simply watching. Now your family holds a plan for a place that catches its own water, builds its own soil, feeds you from the kitchen door, and gives more each year than the year before. It will take time, and it will change as you go. That's the point. You're not just designing a homestead; you're learning, together, how to tend and keep a piece of the earth.
- 1Reading your land: sun, water, wind and slope.
- 2Zones and sectors: where everything belongs.
- 3Building living soil.
- 4Water in the landscape.
- 5The kitchen garden.
- 6Bees, chickens and small animals.
- 7Your site plan, drawn together.
Next comes building: the water, power and waste systems that let a family live on the land you've just designed.
Your Lesson 7 worksheet
Work through these together. Your answers save on this device as you type, and print cleanly for your records.
Progress record
What this lesson practices:
- EngineeringDefining criteria and constraints, evaluating competing designs and refining a solution (NGSS MS-ETS1-1, MS-ETS1-2, MS-ETS1-4).
- MathScale drawings and multi-step planning (Common Core 7.G.A.1, 7.EE.B.3).
- GeographyCreating a complete map with a key, scale and direction.
- SpeakingPresenting a plan clearly with visual displays (Common Core SL.5.4, SL.5.5).
Standards mapping is a draft. If you use charter or ESA funds, confirm it with your education specialist.