Geomancer Permaculture

We had such a cool time with folks from the Lexington office of who came out to Kilrush Food Forest to see what the heck we've been up to and lend a little volunteer power as part of their community engagement efforts. Thank you all so much!

Here at Geomancer, we are pretty openly experimenting with a lot of wild s**t that we couldn't have learned from anywhere else because there just wasn't anyone doing it to learn from. So to have some of these experienced landscape architects, engineers, and administrative folks take interest in our work felt really validating, and providing these tangible examples of how we can reintegrate with nature is exactly why we do this stuff.

Photo 1: A theme for the day - feasting on the wild strawberries that make up a vital part of our groundcover matrix.

Photo 2: Looking at the architecture of a hybrid white mulberry (Morus alba) that had grown in competition with invasive woody shrubs removed in the early stages of the project.

Photo 3: Putting a dent in our insane ambition to sheet mulch an entire three acre greenway. 💪

Photo 4: Checking out perennial beds at the woodland edge and a cute planter we made from a hollow log that is now host to a native creeping phlox (Phlox subulata).

Photo 5: Considering an experimental perennial polyculture of sunchokes (Helianthus tuberosus), hopniss (Apios americana), and wild mint (Mentha arvensis).

Photo 6: Exploring the food forest's woodland trails and riparian species composition along Wolf Run Creek.

We had a great time yesterday at Canopy Con '26; so grateful to have been invited out for another year to share our work and reconnect with folks from urban forestry and adjacent fields across Kentucky and beyond.

As is Canopy Con tradition, Geomancer provided one of the field demonstration stations for the afternoon portion, and this year we were asked to speak on the topic of urban food forests.

As is also tradition we went into the presentation somewhat blind, but the landscape provided generously, with dozens of mature black cherry (Prunus serotina) trees in full flower above an understory of black raspberry (Rubus occidentalis) and elderberry (Sambucus canadensis), the former full of developing fruit.

And this was just the random mid succession woodland in the back of the conference venue (our Fayette County Cooperative Extension office). So right there we were able to show a real continuum of agroecological legibility from the prepared annual garden beds closest to the office, through the ornamental landscape beds a little further out, and then finally to the unmaintained bottomland canopy beyond.

We hope that this perspective was fruitful in demonstrating how the indigenous polyculture that comprises a good chunk of our native flora is already a foundationally productive agroecosystem - every forest is a "food forest."

We had a great time yesterday at Canopy Con '26; so grateful to have been invited out for another year to share our work and reconnect with folks from urban forestry and adjacent fields across Kentucky and beyond.

As is Canopy Con tradition, Geomancer provided one of the field demonstration stations for the afternoon portion, and this year we were asked to speak on the topic of urban food forests.

(As is also tradition) we went into the presentation somewhat blind, but the landscape provided generously, with dozens of mature black cherry (Prunus serotina) trees in full flower above an understory of black raspberry (Rubus occidentalis) and elderberry (Sambucus canadensis), the former full of developing fruit.

And this was just the random mid succession woodland in the back of the conference venue (our Fayette County Cooperative Extension office). So right there we were able to show a real continuum of agroecological legibility from the prepared annual beds closest to the office, through the ornamental landscape beds a little further out, and then finally to the unmaintained bottomland canopy beyond.

We hope that this perspective was fruitful in demonstrating how the indigenous polyculture that comprises a good chunk of our native flora is already a foundationally productive agroecosystem - every forest is a "food forest."

This is not a drill! We are partnering with .evergreen and the City of Morehead to imagine Kentucky's newest food forest: Bluebell Island.

Join us this Sunday at noon right on the banks of Triplett Creek at the pavilion by the Morehead City dog park where we'll formally launch this new project and rally community support for what is sure to be an exciting new adventure.

Word is getting out! This is a real strategy that we can use to organize for a better future.

We made a huge (great!) mess this weekend at our second Ecological Design workshop with .ky

Since the topic of the workshop was soil and water, we figured what better time to put the Scale of Permanence into practice by digging out the first basin of a new stormwater system to accommodate runoff sheeting from the existing patio at AVOL's new Anderson Meadow food forest.

This was a great team effort in some tough soils, and we were rewarded shortly after by getting to see how our new basin performed in a spring rain shower. Looking good!

A special thanks to the .uky students who worked this semester sampling soils on site to make sure that we weren't dealing with any heavy metal contamination before growing food and medicine in the floodplain. Y'all made some very important contributions to the early stages of this project!

This rain garden is just the start of what we have planned out at Anderson Meadow for this summer and beyond. Our next workshop is on Ethnobotany and Plant Polyculture Design, 10am May 2nd at AVOL. Come get involved!