Design Services

Our Design Offerings

In addition to leading the year long Permaculture Design Course, Catherine and Neville Dunton-McLeod are happy to do design work for properties between Waihi Beach and Rotorua, including the areas around Tauranga, Omokoroa, Papamoa and Katikati. If you live outside this area, contact us and we’ll try to refer you to another quality designer.

A permaculture inspired design can save you time, money and resources. The design process is as much about you and your lifestyle as it is about the land. We work with your wish list, skills, time, taste and budget. We then consider the property itself – soil type, weather exposure, slopes, plants, water and buildings.  Our aim is to produce aesthetic and functional designs which include all the possible items off your wish list, well located within the microclimates and landscape of your property.

Many couples contact us because they have different visions of where things will go, or the chosen aesthetic of the place.  Most couples we have worked with find that  “stuck spots” smooth out once we all get into the concept design process together.

Concept Design Consultancy:

Here’s how working with us usually goes:

1. You contact us and we have a preliminary phone chat.
2. If we both feel its a “go”, we send you some homework over email: requests for photos, wish lists, etc., so that we can get to know you.
3. Once we’ve received all your homework, we’ll arrange a suitable time for a 2-3 hour visit your property. 
4. After a brief hello, we then walk around your property without you, observing and assessing the characteristics of the site (e.g. sun, wind, slope, existing vegetation, water flows). During this walk, we start to come up with a rough pencil “concept” sketch.
5. We then re-walk the site with you, sharing our preliminary concept design and inviting your feedback. This is good time for you to update us on any additional elements you would like included in the design, which could include:

• Diverse and productive organic veggie and fruit gardens
• Soil building: Compost bays, worm farms, carbon growing
• Poultry systems
• Orchards and forest gardens
• Maximum efficiency watering systems including storage and distribution
• Fertility enhancing tree, plant and animal systems
• No-dig and raised garden beds using natural contours to full advantage
• Beautiful and functional mandala gardens
• Ponds for growing water plants and to attract helpful creature and birds to your garden
• Waste water treatment and utilization systems (e.g. greywater mulch pits where biologically filtered water from your laundry and shower irrigates fruit trees)
• Renewable energy systems: solar, solar thermal, wind and microhydro
• Native bird habitat, wildlife corridor
• Human centered places – lawns to gather and run around, outdoor chairs and tables, fire pits, areas for contemplation, scented or secret gardens.
• Magical areas for children
• Safe places for pets
• Herbs gardens supplying food, flavor, tea and medicine 

  6. Back home, we create a map that lays out our basic concept design plus a report summarizing our site analysis, design recommendations, and possible next steps.  This is emailed to you, after which we usually have a phone conversation with you to hear your response and answer any questions.

Our fee for this consultancy is $500 inc. GST,  a $300 deposit payable in advance, the balance upon completion of the concept design.  Large or complex properties may require more time and a higher fee.  A travel fee of .70 per k is also requested. 

After the Concept Design:

Most people find it incredibly useful, concept design in hand, to use ropes or old hoses or stakes to “draw on your site.” Mark out bigger “rooms’ of your site and step into them, see how it all feels. Only then might you want to begin to mark where the tree, shed or beds might go. We love a phone call to share with us how its all going, or perhaps invite us back to re engage with the concept design: “We suspect that if we moved this here or regrouped this with that, we’ll be closer to what we want….”

Detailed Design Consultancy

Some clients like us to return to do a detailed design on one or more areas of the property. You might 

want a detailed design of the land right around your home.  Or perhaps you want an orchard or forest garden design – getting those trees in now so you’ll have fruit all the sooner.  Or maybe you are building or renovating your home and would like our help making sure you make the best building and energy choices from a resiliency and permaculture perspective.  If your main interest is growing food, we can create an aesthetic and edible landscape design you can start to implement.

The detailed design consultancy phase usually requires another short visit to your place.  We then get back to our desks and generate an accurate, to scale base map and design, including particular kinds of plants, exact locations and generally much more detail. We deliver a 5-10 page report with as much helpful detail as we can pack in. Our fee for this consultancy an hourly rate of $40 and .70 per k travel. Large or complex properties may require more time and a higher fee.

Please get in touch with us by email to set up a day and time to have a phone or Skype chat.

Using our secure online checkout below allows you to pay by either bank deposit or credit card via Paypal