Forest Fruits Permaculture - Blog

Nature’s Night Shift: Why Every Property Should Design for Bats

Fri, 03 Jul 2026 22:44:48 GMT

Author: Marlo Weekley

Date Published: July 3, 2026

Nature's Night Shift : Why Every Property Should Design for Bats

What do bats have to do with permaculture?

I t turns out, quite a lot. One of the biggest lessons of ecological design is that the healthiest landscapes never depend on a single species doing all the work. Yes, that’s right gardeners, we can let nature do more of the work. Healthy ecosystems spread responsibility across thousands of relationships. We’ve all probably heard of some of the most famous ecosystem powerhouses: Mycorrhizal fungi help plant roots distribute nutrients to each other underground. Native bees pollinate plants, allowing them to fruit and reproduce. Predatory insects keep pest insects in balance. Bats belong in this list too, though they are unfairly quite less mentioned, even among ecologists.

As dusk rolls around in Central Texas, bats emerge from under bridges, caves, hollow trees, and eaves of buildings to hunt. They can be found especially nearby water sources in all sorts of places, from neighborhoods, orchards, ranches, wilderness areas, and– as Austin, Texas’ famous bat bridge proves, even in dense urban areas.

Texas supports more than thirty species of bats, and most of them are insectivores. Their diet is surprisingly diverse. Mosquitoes are certainly on the menu, but they also eat flies, termites, gnats, flying ants, stink bugs, and much more. A single bat can remove thousands of insects from the air in one evening.

In a food forest, this matters a lot. Many moth species lay caterpillars that feed on fruit trees. Beetles damage leaves, flowers, and fruit. Bats become part of a much larger system of checks and balances, reducing pest pressure before it reaches the point where heavier intervention is needed. And, unlike harsh chemical alternatives, they don’t reduce the insect number to zero, ensuring that the ecosystem stays well-rounded, and continues to support the layers of the food chain steadily.

Bats don’t require much from us at all to invite them into our ecosystems. And if we do, they repay us with one of the most effective forms of safe, organic pest management available. Even some of the largest pecan orchards in Central Texas have taken on the task of incorporating bats into their orchard management.

People often associate bats with caves, but they also live in a variety of other roosting types, and the surrounding landscape matters just as much as the roost. They need clean bodies of water nearby because they drink while flying, skimming the surface of ponds, stock tanks, rivers, or creeks. They benefit from landscapes with layers of vegetation that support a steady supply of insects throughout the growing season. Native grasses, groundcovers, flowering shrubs, woodland edges, and a wide variety of trees all contribute to that food web. Hmm, sounds just like a food forest, doesn’t it?

Eliminating pesticide use protects the insects bats depend upon, and protects all the members of the ecosystem from harmful chemicals. Mature trees with loose bark or cavities should be preserved whenever they can be safely retained. This is a natural place that bats will often roost or rest. These elements increase the likelihood that bats will not only visit your property, but continue coming back year after year.

When designing a bat habitat, you must think like a bat. Their main criteria for a perch is: Is it the right temperature, and is it safe from predators? Successful bat houses are usually mounted on poles or buildings instead of trees, placed twelve to twenty feet above the ground, and positioned away from branches where predators can perch. They should be installed near open flight paths and within reach of reliable water. If you do a quick internet search for bat house installation, you will probably get recommended to put the bat house in an area that gets long hours of direct sunlight. Those are referring to northern climates. In Central Texas, summer temperatures can easily overheat the boxes. You want to put it in an area with about three hours of morning sun, and shade in the afternoon.

Different bat species forage at different heights, eat different insects, and use different kinds of habitat. While some bats’ contribution to the ecosystem is pollinating agaves and cacti, fertilizing soil, and even providing a food source for hawks, owls, and other predators, I’d say that their greatest contribution is pest control. And Central Texas is famous for its Mexican free-tailed bats, who are excellent at this. Their nightly flights have become one of the state's most recognizable wildlife spectacles of the region in the warmer months of the year.

Perhaps the biggest gift bats offer to us though, is a lesson in permaculture. That the most impressive solutions might be nearly invisible in a landscape. It might arrive after dark for the night shift, to carry on with pest control duty while we sleep. When bats choose to call a landscape home, they are responding to more than just the presence of a bat box mounted to a wall. They are telling us the land is ready to become a diverse, thriving community.

A food forest is never just a collection of plants. It is an agreement between hundreds, even thousands of species, each finding its place and contributing something unique. And a gardener’s role is not to exert ceaseless effort and force to maintain control over a land, but to step back and take a look at the bigger picture, and maybe notice how the silent flicker of a bat’s wings is speeding across the night sky to capture its meal, and save you and your garden from becoming a meal to all the myriad of pests. They are true friends and stewards of a healthy permaculture garden. I hope this article inspires you to get expert help to incorporate bats into your landscape project! Feel free to fill out our contact form for more information, and check out the premiere film screening of The Invisible Mammal , an award-winning documentary about bat conservation upcoming in Austin at AFS Cinema this month:

Meet director Kristin Tièche, producer Matthew Podolsky, cinematographer Skip Hobbie, and castmember Dr. Winifred Frick, Chief Scientist of Bat Conservation International for a Q and A at the end.

See you there!

Economic Shift & Opportunity: Why this is the Moment

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 19:55:09 GMT

Author: Marlo Weekley

Date Published: April 7, 2026

Economic Shift & Opportunity: Why this is the Moment

In 2026, we’re watching a shift from land as a passive asset to land as an actively designed system. Land assets are being brought to the drawing board to strategize how they can produce ecological, financial, and cultural value all at the same time. In a moment marked by economic uncertainty and recession risk, this is not where most people expected innovation to surge. And yet, here we are, reshaping the very ground layer of the economy.

Part of what’s driving this shift is simply reality catching up with us. Soil degradation, water scarcity, and climate volatility are no longer abstract. They are material financial risks showing up in supply chains, insurance models, national policy, and even homeownership. In the United States, over $1 billion in new federal investments has been directed toward regenerative practices. Certified regenerative land in the U.S. has exploded from less than 1 million acres in 2021 to approximately 25 million acres today.

This moment in the regenerative movement is the result of multiple systems reaching limits at the same time. First, the economic layer. Land has traditionally been valued through extraction or appreciation, but both of these models are showing volatility. Input costs in conventional agriculture have risen significantly over the past few years, from fertilizers to fuel, while environmental costs to these methods become more aligned with reality (ie., more expensive). At the same time, insurance markets are reacting to our collective climate risk. In many regions, coverage costs are steadily rising or becoming harder to secure altogether. This changes the equation. Stability, not just yield, becomes the place to look for value. Regenerative systems are gaining attention because they reduce dependency on external inputs and increase on-site resilience.

Second, climate risk has crossed into financial reality. This is a major inflection point. Droughts, floods, and erratic weather patterns are no longer edge cases. They are baseline conditions in many regions. For investors and landowners, this translates into inconsistent returns and long-term uncertainty. Regenerative land systems, particularly those focused on soil health and water retention, are being evaluated as risk management tools. Healthy soil acts as a buffer, holding water during drought and absorbing excess during heavy rainfall. That functional resilience is now being priced into decision-making.

Third, policy and capital are aligning in a way they have not before. Governments are beginning to fund soil health, carbon sequestration, and climate-smart agriculture at meaningful levels. At the same time, private capital is building mechanisms to invest in these outcomes. Carbon markets, while still evolving, have created a financial bridge between ecological function and revenue. New biodiversity credit systems are emerging behind them. These are early, imperfect markets, but they signal a great shift in direction. Ecosystem services are entering the language and logic of finance.

Fourth, technology has reached a threshold that makes this operationally viable at scale. A decade ago, managing land as a dynamic system required deep intuition and constant manual observation. Now, satellite imagery, remote sensing, and AI-assisted modeling allow land managers to track vegetation, soil moisture, and ecosystem change in near real time. We still need to temper our reliance on AI by transitioning to fully renewable, clean energy systems and sustainable functionality. But these unprecedented technological advances will reduce climate uncertainty and increase accountability in every industry. It also makes regenerative systems more legible to investors who require data, reporting, and measurable outcomes. When you can track it in this way, it becomes real in the eyes of capital markets.

Fifth, culture and consumer pressure are reinforcing the shift. Large food companies and brands are being pushed to account for how their products are grown, not just what they cost. This has led to major commitments to regenerative sourcing across millions of acres globally. While not all of these commitments are fully realized, they are creating demand signals that move entire supply chains. Land is no longer invisible to the end consumer, and that visibility is shaping behavior upstream.

Finally, there is a design gap, and that gap is an opportunity. The demand for regenerative outcomes is growing faster than the supply of people who can design and manage these systems at scale. This is where land designers, ecosystem thinkers, and strategic operators come in. The shift is not just toward new practices, but toward a new professional role. Someone who can translate ecology into performance, and performance into value.

What is changing just as quickly is how land is managed. Advances in satellite mapping, Ai assistance, and real-time ecosystem monitoring are transforming the role of the land steward from more of a manual operator into an ongoing systems strategist. New research is already exploring Ai-driven land-use optimization models that maximize ecosystem service value across entire regions. This marks a departure from static, copy-and-paste design approaches. The work is becoming adaptive to all the changes we are living amidst, and becoming increasingly accurate.

The results are starting to really show up, even as the science continues to evolve. Large-scale studies comparing regenerative and conventional land management systems are finding significantly higher biodiversity, improved water and topsoil retention, and stronger ecosystem function in regenerative systems, alongside early indications of competitive profitability. At the same time, new markets are forming around ecosystem services themselves. Carbon credits, biodiversity credits, and water-related financial instruments are turning soil, vegetation, and hydrology into measurable economic outputs. Entire firms are now built around monetizing these services, translating ecological function into investable value streams.

This points to something much bigger than a trend. This is the emergence of a new asset class. Land management is becoming a real-time responsive system strategy that can be designed, measured, and optimized over time. It produces stability, adaptability, and a potential for multiple revenue streams. The market signal is clear: Ecology and economy are converging into a single stream of logic, and we are here to help you enter your era where that convergence stops being theory, and starts becoming profitable infrastructure.

Reclaiming Regenerative in the Age of Tech

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 21:29:57 GMT

Bless the tech bros and Ai gurus trying to solve modern problems with crypto and technology. Honestly, bless anyone trying to save the planet, the economy, and humanity right now. It is appreciated. But why are the people trained in business finance and digital programming trying to solve problems that are fundamentally about nature? When the goal is climate repair and regeneration, the conversation needs to include people who have actually spent years with their hands in the dirt.

Author: Marlo Weekley

Date Published: March 12, 2026

Reclaiming Regenerative in the Age of Tech : Ecologists in the Boardroom

Ecologists are watching big tech companies and startups writing “ecosystems” into their business structure. Companies are employing the very best software engineers to supposedly mimic nature’s most successful strategies. But there is something fishy about this. Something very amiss, and a core aspect that is missing here. Where are the regenerative ecologists in the boardroom?

As rogue, unconventional ecologists and determined non-profits incessantly push through a sea of greenwashed businesses that are laser-focused on profit margins and scalability, ecosystems continue to be destroyed in the wake of a hyper-capitalist (and sometimes downright clueless) society.

Regenerative strategy and carbon neutrality should absolutely be priorities in every industry, but why are these sustainable agendas pushing forward without the people who already understand how ecosystems work in real life? Funding, infrastructure, and large-scale coordination are essential to the great regeneration if we are to successfully continue as a species into the long-term foreseeable future.

So, when the important meetings are held, and even in the everyday little choices as action plans inch along to their destination, where are the people who know how to compost or conserve wildlife? If we are serious about a regenerative future, founders and chief engineers with big visions need to be building teams that include regenerative ecologists and designers from the beginning.

So who exactly are we trusting to lead the climate future? Are we putting that responsibility in the hands of people with PhDs in business and tech, but who were trained to make decisions in a sterile classroom, or solitary research in an office building? Or are we bringing in the people who have spent years on the land? We need real regenerative farmers on the front line with them.

And when people post dreamy solarpunk futures online, it is worth asking who is rendering these ideas, and how sensible these designs actually are. We need regenerative professionals on business teams envisioning the future. People who actually understand nature’s decisions, and the resulting bounties or limitations thereof. People who know how life breaks down, transforms, and builds fertility again. ..

If they are not willing to admit that to themselves, then they are not building a truly sustainable future. And if the right people are not in the room, the solutions they are building will never fully match the complexity of living ecosystems.

Biomimicry in technology and business has a role. But none of it replaces an up-close and personal understanding of healthy, natural ecosystems designed by billions of years of trial and error. None of it replaces lived ecological symbiosis. The people who understand soil, water cycles, and plant communities need to be in the room when the decisions are made. Not as consultants brought in at the last minute, but as equal partners from the beginning. If we actually want regeneration instead of just the appearance of it, then the future needs to be designed with boots-on-the-ground, badass regenerative ecologists.

What is Permaculture?

Sat, 29 Nov 2025 02:24:00 GMT

It’s still a question that I get asked often. It is a vast subject, I admit. One that could very well elicit a doctorate program one day, but… it’s actually much simpler than what most people think. Although the field of permaculture encompasses a wide range of disciplines, such as hydrology, soil microbiology, systems sciences, climatology, and agriculture, it is fundamentally grounded in the simplest form of human comprehension, and that is: survival. It’s in our blood. It’s what allowed our species to survive through enormous climactic shifts and numerous mass extinctions. It’s also what allowed generations of humans to live peaceful, healthy lives before industrialization. Although those stories are rarely told.

Permaculture is inherently instinctual, meaning that it resides in our subconscious. Perhaps this could explain why it’s still a somewhat obscure subject. We’re constantly making new discoveries about it, so we’re not really sure yet how to grasp it or fully encompass it, but it’s in us. It’s in all of us.

For a long time I’ve anticipated the eventual formalization of permaculture as a rigorous doctorate degree program, dedicated to cultivating “Doctors of the Earth”. The formation of such a program would entail the synthesis of hundreds of millenia of prehistoric ecological history. We’d really have to look within to find it.

Permaculture is not a novel invention. It is an ancestral knowledge system embedded within the very fabric of human evolution. And yet, many people still don’t understand what it is. They think they need to read the entire Permaculture Design Manual, or leave their home and fly to another country to live on a farm for five years. And my answer to them is, yes and no. You don’t have to build an herb spiral, a creek with check dams, and a hugelkultur bed that takes 6 years to establish. You don’t have to catalogue every organism in your bioregion or be able to draft an engineering design of every known permaculture feature to be able to learn and practice it.

You can start with the philosophy alone, and this can be applied to your daily life. Permaculture is the art of building relationships that benefit everyone involved.
It’s a lot like compounding interest, but instead of riding the chaos of stock markets, you’re dealing with the most grounded form of wealth that exists. Food that nourishes, herbs that heal, pure potable water, clean air, and a home on the earth that does not result in the poisoning of ecosystems.

Yes, permaculture is a design science. It’s ethical, it’s about growing food. But I wonder who understands that it’s also the culmination of everything humans once knew about how to belong to the earth, and not the other way around.

The reason we need a word to describe this natural phenomenon is that we need to learn it again. We need a beacon in order to find like-minded people to reclaim, resist, and rewrite. What we need is the antidote to colonialism itself. And as Lyla June puts it, we need to all come together on the same side. “The only weapons that are useful in this battle are the weapons of truth, faith, and compassion,” she valiantly states in her speech, 3000-Year-Old Solutions To Modern Problems.

And when you place these remembrances against the backdrop of everything that’s happened… genocide as a means of “settlement”, slavery as the foundation of agriculture, poisoned soils and loss of topsoil resulting from the industrial revolution, food-access injustices, food deserts where the only options are chemical-laden, nutrient-deficient fluff… you start to see the need for a naming of remembrance.
And to me, permaculture now needs to be the synthesis of ancestral wisdom and modern science, because we need to adapt to a quickly changing landscape. Climate change is accelerating, topsoil is vanishing, and the current methods for urbanization, tech, and Ai are destroying wildlife. We’re living in the midst of a global mass extinction, and as a society, we’re massively in denial about it.

Author: Marlo Weekley

Date Published: November 28, 2025

What is Permaculture?

Fire as Medicine: Reviving Ancient Indigenous Land Stewardship Techniques

Tue, 09 Sep 2025 21:00:13 GMT

Prescribed burns have been practiced for tens of thousands of years by Indigenous peoples across almost all continents.

Author: Marlo Weekley

Date Published: September 9, 2025

Fire as Medicine: Reviving Ancient Indigenous Land Stewardship Techniques

Studies show that landscapes stewarded with traditional fire regimens are more biodiverse, more resilient to megafires, and even sequester more carbon over time. (Aka, they absorb one of the most harmful greenhouse gasses and make it available for plants to eat and turn it into pure, clean oxygen).

In California alone, Indigenous-led prescribed burns have been shown to reduce wildfire risk by up to 60%. So for ecologists and anyone that knows how long it's taken for "modern civ" to realize, it's thrilling to see land management institutions starting to hire Prescribed Fire Practitioners. This is the kind of regenerative renaissance that we need.

While prescribed burns are powerful tools in certain ecosystems, they're not universally beneficial. Ie., slash-and-burn agriculture in a jungle or a rainforest. Not beneficial.

Fire is medicine, and like all medicines, it has to be applied in the right place, in the right dose, at the right time. Fire in peatlands can start to burn underground, smoldering for weeks and devastating entire wetland ecologies. It's better for the ecosystems that evolved with fire like savannas, chaparral, and oak woodlands.

As the world reckons with climate chaos, we’re not necessarily looking for new solutions. If we focus on remembering and bringing awareness to help everyone recognize the ones that have worked for millennia still work, we can have a much smoother time in the transition to a regenerative paradigm.

What you can do:

Advocate for policy that centers Indigenous land rights and Indigenous-led ecological solutions. The land is calling for right relationship. And sometimes that means lighting it up and watching it burn. It's time to recognize: Indigenous science is leading the climate future.

Let's let it. The path has been lit!

What is Real Value in Regenerative Business?

Thu, 12 Jun 2025 20:16:05 GMT

How do we know when we are creating real value in our professional life? Real value... actual value, comes from surrendering to a natural ebb and flow, and to natural patterns like growth, rest, decay, regeneration. Because in nature, nothing is wasted. Everything has a role, even if it's decomposition. The same can be true for how we do business.

What needs to be composted in your professional life? It is just under the surface of the whole world's consciousness: If it's not sustainable, it's not real. Not real value, not real reward, not real security. When we shift from extraction to reciprocity, from competition to collaboration, we begin to build systems that ebb and flow--systems that are real because the end result is life, regeneration.

We begin to build systems that are not only sustainable but reproductive, not only carbon neutral but fertile, and filled with potential energy not for days, but for generations. This kind of system heals people and the economies they touch. It changes the trajectory.

Permaculture teaches us that real abundance comes from honoring cycles. A real business model won’t just �� harm or �� its carbon footprint. It will actively improve the conditions for life. Like a well-designed food forest, it is diverse, resilient, mutually supportive, and regenerative.

Success gets measured differently. It gets measured by long-term nourishment for communities, ecosystems, and future generations. And the shift is already happening. Are you a part of it? How all-the-way are you a part of the regeneration? This movement needs more stewards, storytellers, and leaders of all industries willing to re-imagine value.

Have you noticed that real value in business is starting to seem like a rarity these days? Or at least, trickier to spot?

Author: Marlo Weekley

Date Published: February 15, 2025

What is Real Value in Regenerative Business?