Leisha At the Living Ground Project, we are growing far more than gardens.
We are cultivating a living system one that begins deep in the soil and extends upward through plants, people, ideas, and the shared heartbeat of community. What I believed I was building in the beginning has transformed. It’s become something more honest and alive, shaped by all that I’ve done, all that I’m doing now, and the unfolding possibilities of what’s still to come.
The soil is our starting place because all real regeneration begins underground.
Healthy soil is not just dirt. It is a web of relationships, alive with bacteria, fungi, archaea, and countless microscopic builders. When the soil thrives, everything connected to it thrives. Food grows stronger, people grow healthier, and communities grow more resilient.
This project has never truly been just about soil. It’s about people. It’s about culture. It’s about weaving farmers with dreamers, locals with newcomers, ancient knowledge with fresh insight. We’re not just growing gardens. We’re cultivating relationships. Between people and land. Between vision and action. Between what we can touch and what we can feel.
In this work, the details matter.
Small matters whether it’s the invisible microbes beneath our feet or the seemingly small acts of ordinary people. I’ve never had a clear map of what exactly I was creating. I just kept showing up, even when others stepped away. I followed a thread I didn’t fully understand, guided more by trust than certainty. I come from a time when we were taught that hard work meant something, that it built things. That belief kept me going. But I’ve noticed that in the generations that follow, the question has shifted. Now it’s often, “What can I get for free? What’s the shortcut?”
At Living Ground, we teach that it’s the small, often unnoticed things that matter most. It’s not usually the grand ideas that cause collapse. It’s the missing detail. One overlooked step, one blind spot, and everything unravels. In soil, a single missing mineral or the absence of a key microbe can break the chain of resilience. In a community, one conversation left unspoken can quietly erode trust. Whether we’re designing a garden or rebuilding culture, the integrity lies in those fine, nearly invisible threads.
In many ways, this is the deeper thread of permaculture and a thread that too often gets lost in the chase for techniques and tidy systems. What flourishes in one place can falter in another, and yet we keep trying to transplant solutions without honoring the soil they must root into. That’s the trap. Real design isn’t about copying patterns; it’s about listening. It’s about humility, observation, and a deep respect for place. Because life isn’t mechanical. It’s relational. And relationships, the real ones, are often uncomfortable, even painful. They challenge us. They change us.
I’ve come to see that context is everything. Companion planting only works if the soil, the climate, and the timing are right. A community initiative can only bloom if the people involved are ready to hold and be held. Even the best ideas can fail when forced out of context. So I’ve learned to work with what’s here, not what I wish were here.
I bring everything I’ve lived through, my experience, my knowledge, my scars, and I offer it to the work. And it’s the failures, not the successes, that have become my most honest teachers. Nature reminds me again and again: strength isn’t speed. It’s stamina. It’s staying with it.
When we honor context, the design holds. It grows deep roots. But when we ignore it, the whole structure weakens. And so, at the core of permaculture is not just a set of principles or a beautiful map. It’s a question that demands honesty and heart:
Is your design truly caring for the Earth?
At Living Ground, our answer to the great question how do we truly care for the Earth is found in biodiversity.
But what is biodiversity, really? It’s not just a scientific term or a checkbox on an ecological checklist. It’s something far more alive, more mysterious. I can’t fully explain it, because it’s not just one thing. It’s a tapestry, a living cooperation of countless beings, experiences, cultures, and understandings, all weaving together in a time when the world around us feels fractured. It’s the way people and plants, microbes and memories, come together to create resilience in the midst of societal unraveling.
And truthfully, I don’t know if everyone around me sees the bigger picture. We’re each holding a thread, contributing in our own way. But I live with the knowing that we are living through a time of great change and the opportunity in that change is immense.
I’ve lived here, in this place, for fourteen years. It’s changed. So have I. But the world I left behind, the one I came from, has changed even more and not for the better. It has grown more rigid, more surveilled, more disconnected from life. Here, we still have the chance to shape something different. Something rooted, relational, and alive.
Biodiversity is the foundation of life’s strength. It is what gives any system, the soil, garden, forest, or community, the ability to bend and not break. When there are many species, and when those species are in relationship, the system becomes stable, adaptive, and fertile. If one strand weakens, others step in. The whole doesn’t fall apart. It heals itself.
We often talk about biodiversity through two lenses. The first is richness and the sheer number of different species present. The second is evenness and how balanced those species are. This doesn’t just apply to the soil or the forest. It applies to our communities, too. Are there many voices? And are those voices being heard in equal measure? That’s biodiversity, too.
Sometimes, we lean on science to track it. We use tools like the Shannon-Wiener Index to measure whether our efforts are increasing life’s diversity. But this is not about numbers. It’s about the feel of it. It’s about noticing that the soil is darker and richer, that the air hums louder with pollinators, that there are more songs in the trees.
And sometimes we measure biodiversity with our hands, our hearts, and our presence. The way soil crumbles between our fingers. The shimmer of wings in morning light. The laughter around a harvest table. These are signs of life deepening.
When biodiversity drops, it’s not just a symptom. It’s a message. Something is missing. A relationship has broken down. A support has gone silent. That’s when we know it’s time to listen more closely. To observe, to feel, and to begin again not by forcing, but by mending what has been forgotten.
Biodiversity is not a goal. It’s a way of being. A practice of inclusion, humility, and deep connection. And here at Living Ground, that is the soil we plant everything in.
Already, the fruits of this way of working are ripening.
At Living Ground, I feel the answer to the great question how do we truly care for the Earth is found in biodiversity.
We’ve just finished making 1.5 liters of rosemary oil, hand-pressed from plants we grew and tended ourselves. Each rosemary bush sprang from soil alive with microbial life of bacteria, fungi, and invisible allies working in harmony beneath the surface. Now we are harvesting and distilling lavender, its scent drifting through the air like a hymn of health, drawn up from soil that remembers how to nourish.
Tucked into the land is our Secret Garden, a living sanctuary where rare and wild herbs from around the world are rooted. These plants are not only growing they are thriving. They are fed by living soil, supported by ancient microbial relationships that connect root to rock, fungus to flower, earth to sky.
From this garden of abundance, we are creating wild foods and ferments. Herbal soups stirred with garden greens, vibrant salsas bright with sun and spice, crackers dense with seeds and stories. Each is alive with the energy of this place. Each carries the signature of soil that has been honored, not exploited. Soon, these offerings will find their way into the hands and homes of our community through the Living Ground store and café.
This is not a vision we are hoping to reach someday.
It is real.
It is happening now.
And it is growing, one rooted relationship at a time.
At Living Ground, we often track the health of our land and community by watching keystone species, the living indicators of the system’s balance.
We look for the earthworms working the soil, the mycorrhizal fungi weaving unseen cities beneath our feet, the butterflies and bees pollinating the abundance. We look at the diversity of ideas around our community tables, at the resilience of local farmers embracing new regenerative methods, at the collaborations blossoming between cultures.
When these keystones grow stronger, we know the system is thriving.
The Living Ground Project is not only about cultivating gardens. It is about cultivating entire living systems. Systems where soil, water, plants, animals, local economies, and human dreams are all interconnected and mutually supported.
In cities, we witness how biodiversity is often stripped away, overwhelmed by the unchecked expansion of a single species: humans. Concrete spreads, monoculture lawns replace meadows, and waterways are silenced. But even there, hope lives. Open a green space, restore a forgotten stream, plant native trees, or link habitats across a neighborhood, and life begins to return. The birds come back. The insects find their way home. The soil breathes again. Diversity begins to pulse once more.
I come from a place where the growing season was painfully short. In Canada, we had only four or five months a year to grow outside. But I didn’t let that stop me. I found ways to sprout, to grow greens indoors, to mimic nature under lights and glass and warmth. I believed in it. I studied it. I experimented with it for years. Because no matter where we are, life finds a way when we give it a chance.
And that is what Living Ground is really about.
Not just gardens.
But regeneration.
Resilience.
And the return of life, wherever we are.
Some days, the work is sitting with clients, peering through the microscope into the landscape of their blood, offering insight, compassion, and the threads of healing. Other days, it’s walking land with someone, listening to the stories held in the hills and soils, helping design a space that can breathe with life again. Then there are the days that feel more like patchwork figuring out how to get the electricity working, how to bring hot water back through the pipes, how to repair what’s broken or build what’s still missing.
It might be checking on the gardens, harvesting seeds, replanting, troubleshooting the irrigation, or stepping into the quiet thinking of how to get the market garden flowing smoothly not just for today but with an eye on the months and years ahead.
What will be needed? What will nourish the community? How can this place keep growing without losing its soul?
There is no single task that defines the work. It’s all part of the same organism. The Project is alive, and it calls on different parts of me, sometimes all in one day. It is messy, beautiful, exhausting, and deeply meaningful.
Permaculture teaches that every element must be connected and must serve multiple functions. At Living Ground, we live this principle every day.
- Apple trees feed birds.
- Birds fertilize fields.
- Fallen apples feed decomposers.
- Fungi recycle nutrients.
- Children share seeds with elders.
- Farmers share markets with newcomers.
- Locals teach gringos the wisdom of place.
- Gringos bring new tools that serve old dreams.
Each relationship strengthens the weave.
Each thread makes the fabric stronger.
In a deeply connected system, disturbances do not cause collapse. They cause adaptation.
Life dances with change, rather than being broken by it.
Thoughtful Permaculture design also recognizes the role of domestic animals.
At Living Ground, we create spaces where livestock can heal land instead of harming it, where dogs and cats are part of the living story without erasing wildness.
We also design for wildness itself, pockets of untamed land, wetlands, forest edges. Not abandoned, but woven thoughtfully into the whole design.
Wild areas act as biodiversity reservoirs, anchoring the system with deep reserves of life and resilience.
Even wildness must be designed. A poorly placed water body can drown species instead of nurturing them. Edges must be woven with care, connecting, flowing, adapting to the land’s own patterns.
Living Ground Project is about weaving all of it together.
The microbial ecologies of the soil.
The gardens bursting with layered abundance.
The farmers who feed the village.
The herbalists who remember the old ways.
The gringos bringing seeds of opportunity.
The locals who root them in tradition.
The markets and economies rooted in regeneration rather than extraction.
Every piece feeds every other piece.
Every new connection is another thread binding soil, people, plants, water, and culture into one living, breathing future.
A friend once said, “With Permaculture, we can do almost anything, but we do not do it any old how.”
We’re not following a rulebook or trying to apply every principle perfectly. We’re just doing the work, day by day, in the way that feels right for this place and these people. At Living Ground, we’re learning together. Sometimes fumbling, sometimes flowing, but always moving forward because something bigger than us keeps pulling us back into the work.
We come from different backgrounds, different stories, different ways of seeing. But still, we find ourselves here, side by side, trying to build something living. Something that matters. I don’t always understand why or how it holds, but it does. Even when things are hard. Even when the path is unclear. There is something real in this shared effort, something worth holding on to.
And I do. I hold on to that tightly.
Because I believe that when people choose to stay, to create together in spite of the messiness, something honest and lasting begins to take root. Not just in the soil but in us.
At Living Ground, the ground is living, and so are we.
