Permaculture Food Forest with Living Canopy & Swales
Direct Lineage • Bill Mollison Design Framework

Turn Waste Into Food.
Turn Liabilities Into Abundance.

Practical urban permaculture, cold-climate closed-loop resilience, and accredited 72-hour Permaculture Design Certification with veteran designer Matthew Stephens.

✓ Mollison Direct Lineage ✓ Chicago Food Forest Builder ✓ 15+ Global PDCs Taught ✓ 72-Hour Accredited Certificate

Ecology Over Theory

Real-world ecological systems engineered to operate passively by gravity, biological cycles, and zero-waste design.

Living Soil and Vermicompost
Soil Biology

Living Soil & Waste Cycling

Convert urban food scraps, carbon yard trimmings, and brewery spent grain into nutrient-dense biological fertility through thermal composting, vermiculture, and microbial inoculants.

Passive Water Catchment and Swale
Hydrology

Passive Water Stewardship

Harvest up to 24,000 gallons of unchlorinated roof runoff annually. Design gravity-fed storage, stone infiltration swales, and rain gardens that eliminate municipal water reliance.

Multi-Tier Perennial Food Forest
Polycultures

Perennial Food Forests

Stack multi-tier edible ecosystems—from deep dynamic accumulators and nitrogen fixers to high-yielding berry bushes and cold-hardy fruit canopies—even on compact city parcels.

Free Diagnostic Download

The 7-Step Urban & Homestead Field Diagnostic Audit

A printable step-by-step diagnostic worksheet to map your site assets, calculate exact rainfall harvest potential, diagnose soil compaction, and locate your highest-leverage first intervention.

  • 1 Boundary & Solar Arc: Map true north, summer angles & shade shadows.
  • 2 Hydrology Math: Calculate roof runoff gallons ($Sq Ft \times 0.623$).
  • 3 Soil & Compaction: 10" screwdriver probe and jar suspension tests.
  • 4 Mollison Zoning: Identify daily Zone 1 to wild Zone 5 sectors.
  • 5 The Action Plan: Turn your #1 site liability into your main asset.
Download Audit in Free Skool Classroom →
7-Step Field Audit Blueprint
📋

Printable Field Blueprint

Included 100% free with Course 101 inside Permaculture Mastery.

Matthew Stephens
Matthew Stephens
Chicago, IL
Lead Instructor & Founder

Direct Lineage. Proven Urban Systems.

Trained directly under permaculture co-originator Bill Mollison (Melbourne, Australia, 2009), Matthew Stephens is one of Mollison’s last direct students. Over three decades, he has adapted core ecological principles to cold-climate urban landscapes, Midwest homesteads, and resilient community food systems.

Founder of Sacred Ecology Design and builder of Chicago’s first food forest (2014), Matthew has taught over 15 PDCs across 4 continents—from Chicago to India, Thailand, and Canada.

"The greatest change we need to make is from consumption to production, even if on a small scale, in our own gardens." — Bill Mollison

Structured Learning Pathways

From foundational urban growing to professional Permaculture Design Certification.

The Regenerative Guild

$49 / month

Advanced monthly mentorship and design teardown vault.

  • ✓ All Free Community benefits
  • ✓ Monthly live Q&A workshops with Matthew
  • ✓ Archival site design teardowns & base map vault
  • ✓ Direct instructor feedback on property designs
Learn More

PDC Masterclass

Course 102 / Accredited

The official 72-hour Permaculture Design Certificate.

  • ✓ Standard international 72-hour PDC curriculum
  • ✓ Watershed hydrology & keyline earthworks
  • ✓ Capstone site plan presentation & review
  • ✓ Official Permaculture Design Certificate
Explore PDC Track

Begin Your Closed-Loop Journey

Join Matthew Stephens, Rowan Holt, and our growing community of land stewards turning liabilities into abundance.

Join Permaculture Mastery Free →