Geomancer Permaculture

It's seed collecting season! With each passing year we are able to get more detailed with the work we do, and one thing we're focusing on for 2026 is seed harvesting and propagation, particularly with lesser-known native woodland species that we haven't had success sourcing elsewhere.

The first photo here shows the burr-like seedheads of sanicle, also known as black snakeroot (Sanicula spp. - we *think* this one is canadensis).

Sanicle is a shade tolerant biennial (or facultative perennial) with edible leaves, but the real headline is that it contains more allantoin (a key medicinal compound) than comfrey (Symphytum spp.)!

Sanicle is by no means rare, but it isn't well-established in the highly urbanized landscapes of the Central Bluegrass, and we're extremely grateful to the staff of the State Botanical Garden of KY for their assistance with plant ID and allowing us to collect native seed in their woods!

The second photo shows the seeds of a close lookalike, white avens (Geum canadense). Note the distinctively long seed awns (in this case a persistent style), which sanicle does not have.

On each equinox and solstice, members of Geomancer gather for a vision circle event in which we revisit our activity over the last several months and anticipate what lies ahead.

There is nothing about this organization that is on autopilot. We are not pursuing projects because they "seem nice," are what the philanthropic class deems valuable, or even out of some internalized sense of moral obligation. We are solely focused on training and consolidating the cadre leadership necessary for the period ahead.

If you think you know what Geomancer is or what we do, you are probably only seeing a very small part of the picture. We take this work very seriously, and invite you to join us in it.

We'd like to extend a huge thanks to these awesome volunteers from the TOYOTA Life at Toyota Business Partnering Groups TERRA and Spectrum - dedicated to environmental sustainability and LGBTQ+ employees and allies, respectively - who came out yesterday to lay mulch and start building trails at the AVOL Kentucky Anderson Meadow food forest in Lexington.

As one of the largest employers in our area, Toyota has had a proud history of supporting the public health mission of AVOL, and we are delighted to help usher in a new era of collaboration involving more hands-on work with the land.

If you would like to learn more about Anderson Meadow or any of our other projects, please don't hesitate to reach out! And stay tuned for a reprise of our FREE in-person ecological design workshop series in partnership with AVOL, which will run for two sessions in the year ahead.

The discussion was deep and the symbolism was lush today when the Lexington IOP was visited by Nachie, urban ecologist and the founder of Geomancer Permaculture, an innovative and award-winning landscaping company that mobilizes communities to transform bleak and neglected areas into flourishing, bountiful and beautiful green spaces. When were were in active addiction, we were selfish and isolated and our worlds turned grim and gray; in recovery, we connect with others and work together to build a bright and thriving world--for both the present and the future.

The Mitchell Avenue Urban Ecology Program has gone from strength to strength, as now fully four adjoining property owners in the Clay's Mill triangle have come together to remove not only invasive brush, but the very fences that had partitioned the area into artificial enclosures anathema to the ecological destiny of the land.

By stepping into the flow of what a world built on collaboration can look like, our Mitchell Avenue neighbors are demonstrating a scalable model of land management that facilitates increasingly sophisticated discussions around what other aspects of our material environment we can be redesigning towards better outcomes.

This has been an incredibly rewarding project, and we're just getting started.

We had a great time hosting 38 of the brightest young minds in Kentucky from the Governor's Scholars Program Governor’s Scholars Program at Kilrush Food Forest in Lexington.

Hailing from communities across the Commonwealth, the rising high school seniors got a chance to see how the urban food forest model can be used to tackle neighborhood-scale challenges from flooding to food access.

These exceptionally motivated students came with insightful questions that touched on social permaculture, ecological design, and decision making in the face of climate change and pessimism.

We are so proud to help facilitate these discussions, and know that this work is inevitably having a ripple effect across the state, qualitatively raising the level of discussion when it comes to what we value in land use planning and what people believe is possible.

One of the most important "crops" we produce at Kilrush is education, so if you have a group that would be interested in seeing this living example of urban permaculture first hand, we'd love to have you out for a tour sometime.

A huge thanks to the GSP and to all of our partners, donors, and supporters who have been making this work possible.

Honored to stand alongside our visionary co-conspirators at AVOL Kentucky as they were presented with an Environmental Award by the Lexington Environmental Commission for their work transforming a detention basin in the back of their property into the new Anderson Meadow food forest.

You may be asking yourself how a project launched earlier this year could have already garnered enough attention to merit an award from the city, and the answer is precisely in the visionary nature of AVOL's stewardship.

From the outset, AVOL understood that the task of reconsecrating their landscape was not a burden to be borne, but a gift to be shared.

This spring's Ecological Design workshop series at Anderson Meadow was incredibly successful, opening the management of the space to the community and creating situations in which meaningful decisions about the future of the landscape could be taken together.

Every project is like this - an opportunity to draw wider layers of people into a practice of talking about the material situation around them and how to change it for the better.

We are so proud to be working alongside AVOL, and confident that this award will be only the first of many for them in their role as guardians of Anderson Meadow.

Our amazing partners from the Mitchell Avenue Neighborhood Organization were back out today for the second planning session of our neighborhood-scale urban ecology program.

Neighbors debriefed from the walking tour that had capped off our last meeting and discussed the neighborhood's main ecological "centers of gravity" where we see the most potential for beneficial intervention (one of the key examples being the utility easement we cleared of invasive brush last week).

We reaffirmed our commitment to the direction we are heading in and made plans to reach out to wider layers of the neighborhood in the months ahead. We'll keep up this momentum through the summer and follow up with some nice tree plantings in the fall, and who knows what else we might have up our sleeves in the meantime 👀

The Urban Forest Initiative's indomitable Tree Corps joined Geomancer at Kilrush Food Forest in Lexington yesterday, marking another chapter in a fantastic partnership that has meaningfully contributed to the development of this incredible space over the last two years.

One of the most underappreciated aspects of the community food forest model is the extent to which it concentrates so many of the most relevant topics in urban forestry - soils, hydrology, community engagement - into a practical template and living classroom.

Having the largest public food forest in Kentucky right here in Lexington is an incredible resource, and it's wonderful to see all of the ways in which neighbors, students, and community organizations have benefitted from this project.

We're tearing down fences - literally and figuratively!

Yesterday, Geomancer techs joined members of the Mitchell Avenue Neighborhood Organization for the latest leg of our urban ecology project focused on getting neighbors organized to take control over the material conditions of their lives.

Previous environmental analysis had identified an overgrown utility easement at the back of several properties as a prime opportunity for removal of invasive plants and conversion into productive social space and native habitat. Thanks to some fantastic organizing by the Mitchell Avenue neighbors, three adjoining property owners all came together to help open up this previously neglected land and transform it into an asset for the community.

In the midst of clearing out the invasives and discovering this amazing new space, we couldn't resist pointing out to a couple of the neighbors that the fence dividing their properties was also serving no purpose other than as an artifact of a culture whose colonial notions of land ownership are increasingly irrelevant.

So we tore that s**t down!

If you and your neighbors are ready to get organized, then we are ready to help. Urban ecology for us isn't just about planting trees and pretty flowers but rather seriously, tangibly looking at the kind of long term political empowerment that we need to be organizing for in every neighborhood.