Our Projects

Plantings included pineapple, Surinam cherry, ginger, taro root, bananas, yucca, vetiver grass, mango, avocado, and balsa wood, arranged to maximize ecological function and yield. The system will also be supported by sustainable bio-factories producing compost varieties, bio-ferments, and other biological ammendments all made locally on-site. This installation serves as a living demonstration of tropical syntropic agriculture on a large scale, even in a remote area that is not accessible to heavy machinery or construction vehicles.

In 2023, a young couple reached out to us with a unique challenge. They were in the process of developing a retreat center for healing, wellness, and connection to nature. On the land, a central area that was once used for heavy equipment during a hempcrete construction project, had become compacted and barren.

While the couple planned to build a residential structure there in the future, the permitting and construction process was still years away. In the meantime, this central, highly visible space left an eyesore from the view of the main house.

Until future construction begins, the site will thrive as a living sanctuary, alive with seasonal color, the hum of bees and butterflies, and a stunning view for the family and retreat guests. This project reflects the mission of Forest Fruits Permaculture to weave together ecological restoration, community, creativity, and deep care for the land. By saying yes to learning something new and lending a hand for the vision of the retreat center, participants revived a once-barren space into a place for healing and hope.

Central Texas has quickly become a cultural hotspot for the still-forming solarpunk movement, defined by radical optimism for a sustainable future. There are many adopters of the idea as simply an artistic genre, similar to steampunk, but it is up to leaders like Marlo to bridge the concept into practical strategies and steps. Bill Worsham had recently acquired land adjacent to the festival grounds, and teamed up with Solarpunk Summit founder Angel Robinson and permaculturist Marlo to brainstorm future collaborations for a permanent hub for solarpunks to work and play.

In January 2024, a community gathering took place in Kingsbury, Texas, bringing together environmental advocates and solarpunk practitioners for a day of learning, dialogue, and visioning. This event was the culmination of a vision shared by Yolanda Palomares, Bill Worsham, and myself, merging ancestral wisdom with contemporary ecological initiatives. What began as a small and simple idea for Mr. Worsham’s ranch became a growing game plan for a long term community resilience strategy.

I can’t think of a better plant to try to convince everyone to start growing. And yes, I’ve gotten in trouble for trying to grow it. My neighbors came running out of their houses the first time I started digging a hole to grow bamboo, because to the undiscerning eye, it’s a dreaded invasive nightmare. And it’s true, if you aren’t growing the right variety, you could be creating a costly, labor intensive problem in your garden. So be sure to ask a horticulturalist (like us) how might the right variety of bamboo be a new member of your garden. Our advice is to treat bamboo as a long-term relationship rather than a quick fix. When chosen wisely, bamboo can shift it's reputation from neighborhood nuisance to ecological ally.

The objective of the initiative is to teach, gather resources, and collectively design and demonstrate regenerative urban landscaping informed by the wisdom of rainforest ecology. More than half of the world’s rainforests have already disappeared due to human demand for timber, farmland, and development. Pressured by industrial agriculture, logging, mining, and the accelerating impacts of climate change, these irreplaceable centers of biodiversity have been reduced to fragments, with only about one-third still standing intact.

In the Amazon Rainforest in particular, as most of us know already, this natural process is being heavily disrupted by human activity. Namely, it is caused by slash-and-burn cattle ranching, intensive monocrop agriculture, illegal logging and mining, and continued unwarranted development. And this is all despite its stewardship and de facto decision-making authority led by hundreds of indigenous tribes that have been struggling to protect and gain legal ownership of their ancestral lands of thousands of years.

So, what does this have to do with urban permaculture? Well nature has a slow and wise process of creating vitality in this type of miraculously complex and beautiful system called a rainforest or jungle, and we as humans have an uncanny ability to aid in the initiation of this process, by way of collecting rainwater, turning biomass into viable nutrient-dense soil, and planting a wide variety of plants according to what we know about this interdependent forest designed by billions of years of trial and error. Rainforests are our inspiration. The urban landscape is our context.

The Urban Permaculture Rainforest Initiative is a multi-location, ongoing living installation. Anyone is welcome to join the decentralized movement and start a chapter in their own area. At our first location, we are teaching the lessons of the rainforests by deeply looking at a concept from permaculture called “edge.” It means utilizing the boundaries of a system, of a philosophy, a topography, a zone, shape, micro- or macroclimate, as the place of greatest potential. In this case, it’s a place on the verge between nightlife culture and industry, and residential neighborhoods between wealth and poverty. And taking place in a climate zone between subtropical and tropical, and a culture becoming one of the most ethnically diverse in the nation.

The UPRI invites you to join in the movement of learning with your community and practicing how you can apply the wisdom of a complex rainforest ecosystem in your own home biome. One way to do this is to choose a public-access outdoor site where the community can experience hands-on practices that will increase the land’s ability to capture and store carbon and filter toxic pollutants from the atmosphere. You can do this by learning methods of composting that work well for your area, and planting a diverse, dense garden with many layers. It is vital to do this responsibly and safely, which requires deep study of your region’s local native species, as well as learning what species can be detrimentally invasive and disease-prone in your area, being sure to remove them, and definitely not to install them. It is advised to get in contact with your local wildlife experts to make sure you are maintaining a safe habitat for native species, especially those that are threatened or endangered. The goal is to create a lush, ever-changing living installation and learning site, built by and for the community.

The continued development happening in the area is worsening the destruction of coastal and intercoastal mangrove forests and habitats. In this design, Phase 1 is part of a successional plan for flood mitigation including a bioswale, rain gardens, and native pollinator plants. It starts with a pop of color that also increases biomass, particularly from a collection of plants chosen for their ability to quickly draw in water, and to remain resilient and low maintenance in the face of the extreme weather events that occur here.