Read the land, then design.

Permaculture without the mysticism: what to look at, in what order, and which plants do which job. Two halves — one you read, one you point at your own ground. Both free, and yours to print.

Read your own land map.thinkdeep333.com Draw your boundary on a map and it pulls the ground underneath: contours and slope from the USGS elevation model, your soil map units from the USDA survey, ten years of climate, the sun's arc for your latitude, the wind by season. It marks where water collects. Then put swales on the contour and lay the design out on top. The method, in 21 pages Observe · water · soil · plants · structures · animals · cold climates · scale. The whole sequence in the order a design actually happens, written plainly, with the reasoning rather than the rules. 150 plants, and guilds Filter by hardiness zone, layer, and the job you need done — nitrogen, mulch, nectary, windbreak. Pick a tree and it builds the guild around it.

How the two halves fit

The pages teach the sequence; the map runs it on your ground. Read Observe first and Water, then go draw your boundary and find out where your own water actually goes — it is usually not where you thought. Neither half needs the other.

Where the data comes from, and what happens to yours

Elevation from USGS 3DEP, soils from the USDA NRCS survey, climate from ERA5 via Open-Meteo, maps from OpenStreetMap — public data, no keys, no scraping.

These reading pages set no cookies at all. The map sets one: a random ID so your saved designs come back to you, with no name, email or account attached to it. Clear it and they are gone, so keep your own copy of anything that matters.

Elevation and soils cover the United States. Outside it the climate, sun and design tools still work; the terrain reading does not.