The Beet: A Podcast For Plant Lovers · Epic Gardening

Design Diverse Landscapes with Brandy Hall

·1 hr·4 clips

In Atlanta, 75% of rainfall happens in a one-inch event or less.

Jacques opens by saying permaculture has always interested him, even if he has only scratched the surface and stayed around the edges of it. Brandy Hall comes on from Shades of Green Permaculture to talk about her new book, The Complete Guide to Home Permaculture. The conversation keeps circling back to making permaculture feel less like an all-or-nothing system and more like something a regular homeowner can actually use. Jacques points out that a lot of people hear the word and assume they need to buy into a whole doctrine. Brandy keeps returning to the site itself. She says a lot of the work is reading existing conditions and working with the plants that want to be there. That opens into a broader point about regenerative design and permaculture design responding to nature instead of fighting it, which really is the center of the whole thing. The interview then turns to water, because water sits underneath nearly everything in a garden. Brandy lays out how she thinks about water before she thinks about the rest of the landscape. She explains that it helps to understand how water moves through a space rather than treating it like something that just comes from a tap. Jacques asks how she approaches a yard when she starts with water, soil, or something else. Brandy answers by talking about Atlanta, where she gets about 50 to 60 inches of rain a year. She says the pattern has changed over the last 15 years. What used to look more like summer showers and damp winter months has shifted toward longer dry stretches and fewer but much more intense rain events. She gives the kind of detail that makes the point stick, including storms that dump a huge amount of rain in a very short time. The conversation uses that weather picture to show why landscape design has to stay flexible. It is not just about making things look good. It is about shaping a space that can handle wet periods and drought while still feeling at home in the urban and suburban world people live in. The final stretch comes back to the tension between function and appearance, and Brandy and Jacques land on the idea that a regenerative landscape can still feel like a place a person actually wants to live with, not a lesson pinned to the lawn.

As heard by us

Permaculture comes across as practical here, anchored in water, site reading, and a calmer take on home gardening.

Brandy Hall's permaculture talk stays close to the basics that matter: read the site, notice the conditions already there, and work with them instead of pushing against them.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

If you want permaculture that starts with the site, the water, and working with what is already there, press play.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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