Canopy

Field guide

How a designer thinks

Canopy is built around the same order a good designer already uses: ethics, then process, then the scale of permanence, then zones and sectors, then species. This page is the desk reference so you do not have to keep twelve books open.

Ethics

  1. Earth care

    Rebuild living soil, protect water, and leave habitat. Every element should increase the health of the system it sits in — not mine it.

  2. People care

    Design for the real household: time, skill, bodies, culture, and joy. A clever system that nobody will maintain is not a design. It is a drawing.

  3. Fair share

    Set limits to consumption and redistribute surplus — food, seed, water, knowledge, fertility. The yield that cannot be used should feed the next loop, not rot as waste.

SADIMET

Survey, analysis, design, implement, maintain, evaluate, tweak. Canopy's left rail is this sequence.

  1. SSurvey. Maps, client, walks, photos, tests, neighbors, history of the land. Collect without deciding.
  2. AAnalysis. Sectors, zones, scale of permanence, water budget, soil, constraints. Make the base maps talk to each other.
  3. DDesign. Concept first (bubbles, flows, zones). Detail second (species, pipes, schedules). Iterate on paper, cheaply.
  4. IImplement. Phase it. Earthworks in the dry. Trees in the dormant window. Start with water and access.
  5. MMaintain. The design is a living timetable: mulch, prune, move animals, clean spillways, sharpen the saw.
  6. EEvaluate. What yielded? What failed? Where did water actually go? Walk it after the storm and after the drought.
  7. TTweak. Adjust. The seventh generation of a site is the point, not the first drawing. Revision is the practice.

Holmgren's twelve

  1. 1. Observe and interact

    Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

    Walk in every season and weather before you move earth. Sit. Watch where the cat goes, where water sheets, where frost lies at 7 a.m. The first year of a new site is mostly looking.

  2. 2. Catch and store energy

    Make hay while the sun shines.

    Sun, rain, biomass, money, and skill arrive in pulses. Store them in soil, ponds, wood, seed, masonry, and people. Swales, tanks, root cellars, and libraries are all batteries.

  3. 3. Obtain a yield

    You can't work on an empty stomach.

    If the system does not feed the designer, it dies. Design early yields (eggs, greens, firewood) around the long bets (mast, timber, soil).

  4. 4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback

    The sins of the fathers are visited on the children unto the seventh generation.

    Build feedback: overflow spillways, electric fence, compost thermometers, harvest logs. When the land tells you no, change the drawing — do not shout at the land.

  5. 5. Use and value renewable resources and services

    Let nature take its course.

    Animals, trees, gravity, and microbes work for free if you house them well. Prefer a deciduous shade tree over an air conditioner; a duck over a slug pellet.

  6. 6. Produce no waste

    Waste not, want not. A stitch in time saves nine.

    Every output is an input for something else. Humanure, woodchips, whey, packing pallets, and 'weeds' are unplaced resources. Design the next user before you create the stream.

  7. 7. Design from patterns to details

    Can't see the forest for the trees.

    Climate, landform, water, and access first. Zones and sectors next. Species last. Do not start with a plant list.

  8. 8. Integrate rather than segregate

    Many hands make light work.

    Each element should serve several functions, and each function should be served by several elements. Stack: the hen tills, eats ticks, lays, and manures. Put her where those jobs are needed.

  9. 9. Use small and slow solutions

    The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Slow and steady wins the race.

    A 20 m swale you can spade and watch for a season beats a 400 m pond you cannot afford to fail. Scale with evidence.

  10. 10. Use and value diversity

    Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

    Polycultures, mixed ages, mixed genetics, mixed enterprises. Diversity is insurance against a novel pest, a late frost, or a broken market.

  11. 11. Use edges and value the marginal

    Don't think you are on the right track just because it is a well-beaten path.

    The edge is the richest place: pond margin, woodland edge, the verge of a path. Increase edge with scallops, peninsulas, and keyhole beds — then put the work there.

  12. 12. Creatively use and respond to change

    Vision is not seeing things as they are but as they will be.

    Succession is a tool. Pioneer locust, then oak. A dead elm is a shiitake yard. Climate is moving — design with the hotter, wilder weather, not the memory of 1980.

Scale of permanence

P.A. Yeomans, via Keyline. Design the hard things first so the easy things have somewhere honest to sit.

  1. 1. Climate

    Nearly immovable

    You do not change the climate. You read it: hardiness, rainfall, sun angles, storm tracks, frost pockets. Every later decision is a reply to this layer. Holmgren: design for energy descent and a wilder atmosphere than the one you remember.

  2. 2. Landform

    Very hard

    Ridges, hollows, aspect, slope, geology. You can nick a swale or a terrace; you cannot economically flip a north face to south. Read the keypoint, the saddles, the old creek benches.

  3. 3. Water

    Hard

    Yeomans' obsession and still the right one. Roof → tank → garden; ridge → dam → gravity irrigation; flood → spread → soak. Place water before trees and before buildings. Overflow is part of the design.

  4. 4. Access

    Hard

    Roads, tracks, gates, and the path from kettle to compost. Bad access is a tax you pay forever. Put the road on contour where you can; keep vehicles out of the wet hollow.

  5. 5. Trees

    Medium

    Woodlot, orchard, windbreak, savanna. Trees are a 20–200 year decision. Plant them after water and access are honest, not before. They will outlive the fence.

  6. 6. Buildings

    Medium

    House, barn, greenhouse, root cellar. Site them for sun, wind, access, and gravity-fed water. Moving a barn is a story you tell sadly.

  7. 7. Fences / subdivision

    Easier

    Paddocks, garden fence, deer fence, the line you argue with the neighbor. Changeable, but still expensive in time. Design paddocks to water and shade, not to a pretty rectangle.

  8. 8. Soil

    Most pliable

    The miracle: soil is the least permanent and the most improvable. Cover, roots, animals, minerals, time. Do not buy fertility if you can grow it. Start here on day two — after you have looked.

Zones

Zone 0 — the house

Always

The dwelling, kitchen, indoor climate, greywater, the people. Retrofit here first: insulation, rain on the roof, a south window, a place to put boots. The house is a climate machine and a social one.

Zone 1 — daily

Several times a day

Kitchen door: herbs, salad, greenhouse, worm farm, clothesline, the path you actually walk. If you will not harvest it in socks, it does not belong in Zone 1.

Zone 2 — regular

Daily to every few days

Intensive beds, main orchard, compost, chickens, nursery. Still close. Mulched, fenced, designed. The working garden.

Zone 3 — field

Weekly to seasonal

Staple crops, main orchard or nut alley, pasture, large livestock, the dam. Machinery may live here. Less tending, more structure.

Zone 4 — semi-wild

Occasional

Managed woodland, mast, coppice, forage, hunt, hardy grazing. You harvest more than you plant. Thinning, fire, and animals are the tools.

Zone 5 — wild

As a guest

No design except the path that lets you watch. Seed source, predator habitat, humility. Every site needs a place you do not improve.

Sectors

  • Summer sun

    High, long arc. Shade the west wall. Grow the annuals in the full sweep.

  • Winter sun

    Low, short, from the south (in the northern hemisphere). Keep that sector open. Deciduous trees, not evergreen.

  • Winter wind

    Usually the cold quarter. Windbreak, building orientation, animal shelter. Do not put the greenhouse door here.

  • Summer breeze

    Cooling. Keep it. Funnel into outdoor rooms. Block it and you will regret August.

  • Wildfire

    Usually the dry-wind quarter plus slope. Defensible space, gutters, no juniper against the siding, a pond on that side if you can.

  • Flood / overflow

    The creek, the swale overflow, the neighbor's ditch. Put structures out of it. Put fertility into it carefully.

  • Noise / road

    Earth berm, evergreen belt, the bedroom on the quiet side. Design the morning coffee away from the highway.

  • View / privacy

    Frame the good; screen the rest. A view is an energy — spend it on the places you sit.

  • Drift / pollution

    Neighbor spray, road dust, old orchard lead. Hedge, buffer, don't grow leafy greens on the fence line.

  • Wildlife pressure

    Deer trails, coyote, raccoon. Fence the garden, not the county. Put mast and thicket where you want them instead.

Forest layers

Canopy

Tall trees: mast, timber, high shade. 15–30 m. Oak, pecan, chestnut, locust.

Sub-canopy

Low trees: fruit and understory. 4–12 m. Pawpaw, persimmon, apple, redbud.

Shrub

Hazel, elder, currant, cane fruit, N-fixing shrubs. The working middle.

Herbaceous

Perennials, vegetables, medicines, dynamic accumulators. Comfrey, asparagus, echinacea.

Groundcover

Living mulch: strawberry, clover, violet, ginger. Bare soil is an unfinished sentence.

Vine / climber

Grape, kiwi, hops, maypop, groundnut. Use the vertical. Train on the edge.

Rhizosphere

Roots, tubers, mycelium's partners. Sunchoke, groundnut, the soil food web.

Fungal

The eighth layer some designers name. Shiitake on oak, wine cap in chips, mycorrhizae in every planting hole.

Water, briefly

Annual water budget ≈ precipitation × area × coefficient. A hectare at 1,000 mm is 10,000 m³ of rain. You will not catch it all. You only need to catch the piece that currently leaves as damage.

Roof catchment is the cleanest water on most sites. 1 mm on 1 m² = 1 litre. A 150 m² roof in a 40 mm storm is 6,000 litres. First-flush, then tank, then overflow to a garden swale.

Swales are level. If they are not level they are ditches. Survey them. Give them a spillway to a safe place. Plant the berm as if it were a tree line, because it is.

A pond is a hole that holds, with an overflow that cannot fail. Clay, bentonite, or a liner. Fence. Deep for fish, shelves for edge. Site it at the keypoint if the land offers one.

Kitchen and bath water is a daily stream. Keep grease out. Mulch basins of mulberry, hazel, and banana (where hardy) eat it. Know your local code; design the biology either way.

Patterns

Swale on contour

A level ditch-and-berm that holds sheet flow, soaks it, and grows a tree line on the downhill berm. Always with a spillway. Never a dam pretending to be a swale.

Keypoint and keyline

Yeomans: the keypoint is where the upper valley slope suddenly flattens. A dam there commands the most country by gravity. Keyline cultivation spreads water from valley to ridge.

Pond with edge

Deep enough to stay cool, shallow shelves for wetland plants, a fence the livestock cannot wreck, an overflow you can walk in a flood. Edge is yield: ducks, cress, willow, fish.

Keyhole bed

A circular or horseshoe bed with a single path into the center. More edge, less path, harvest without stepping on soil.

Herb spiral

A one-metre-high spiral of stone: dry Mediterranean herbs on the south top, moisture lovers at the north base. Teaching tool and daily yield beside the kitchen.

Windbreak in rows

At least three staggered rows, densest at the height you need, length 10× the sheltered height, perpendicular to the damaging wind. Permeable, not a wall — a wall makes turbulence.

Chinampa / pond-and-bed

Alternating water and growing beds. Fertility washes; roots drink. Useful at any scale from a backyard pond to a wetland farm.

Hugelkultur

A buried-wood mound that holds water and feeds fungi for years. Best with already-dead wood on a well-considered site — not a way to hide a forestry problem.

Chicken tractor / paddock shift

Move birds over ground they can improve, not destroy. Short occupation, long rest. Trees for drop fruit overhead.

Food forest

Stacked perennial layers mimicking a woodland edge — the most productive natural structure we have. Start with water and wind, then canopy, then the rest. It is slow on purpose.

Outside Canopy

No single app holds the land. These are the desks a designer actually keeps open.