The Apricot Centre team offer a professional design service for sustainable farms, smallholdings, community gardens and large gardens.
If you require anything from advice to a full permaculture design, we can help you based on our expertise in permaculture, biodynamics, regenerative farming, agroforestry, horticulture and livestock systems.
We can design “for you” and we have also pioneered methods of doing design work “with you” or with small groups that are working on a project. Using these methods we can be flexible in our approach and tailor it according to your own budget and skillset. Example scenarios….
Full Design Service
We will take you through the whole design process, leading at every stage, and produce a detailed design report and map of your land. We meet at the early stages to clarify your aims and objectives for the land, carry out a site survey and then come back to you with design ideas. We work with you in an interactive design process to finalise the design and then produce the written report and map.
Facilitated Design Service
We will lead you through the design process, tasking you to perform the design work according to your skillset and provide advice and consultation throughout. This can be more cost-effective for you if you have the time and desire to perform some of the work.
We meet at the early stages to clarify your aims and objectives for the land, carry out a site survey and then come back to you with design ideas. We work with you in an interactive design process to finalise the design and then produce the written report and map.
Expert Detailed Horticultural and Systems Advice
We have very good knowledge of the more detailed aspects of land design, so can advise on orchard layout, vegetable cropping plans, irrigation systems and establishing and managing poultry systems.
Business Planning Service
We can help you with business planning and forecasting to ensure that your plans are financially sustainable. This is based on easy-to-use template spreadsheets that you can then refine after we help you establish the initial plans, and refine once you have more detailed information on costs and markets for your business.
Our Consultancy Team
Marina O’Connell is a qualified Permaculture Designer with 30 years experience of designing large scale food producing, biodiverse landscapes. Marina uses Permaculture Design methodology to create sustainable farms, she uses a toolkit of Agroforestry, and Organic and Biodynamic systems.
Bob Mehew can transform the design into a detailed business plan containing projected incomes and costs to help advise on your project's financial sustainability.. Bob can also facilitate setting up of CSA type marketing systems and advise on poultry systems.
Rachel Phillips can input into the design of a “wellbeing” service on a farm or project. This is in terms of the physical needs of a site, and also the policies and legal structures that need to be in place to run a professional service.
Dave Wright and Marina O’Connell can offer detailed crop planning and planning of organic fruit systems .
In addition to the core team, we can partner with related professionals to help you with related aspects to land design:
Martin Large - Business structures and community share offers.
Cerys Rivett - Environmentally focussed architecture services.
Each design is unique, depending upon the site, soil and you the client. We carry out a site survey, a client survey and analyse this information to create a design that is unique to the site and to you. The final design will consist of a large scale detailed drawing, and a written report. The report will offer a selection of the following depending on what is required for the particular design:
Description of the design
Numbers of trees / plants needed and how and where to source them.
Details of livestock systems and where to stock them.
Detailed methods to use in and how to implement them.
Appendix of suppliers and signposting you to other farms or projects to visit for inspiration.
This process will typically take 5-10 days depending upon the size of the project and the level of detail required. Business planning requires a further 2-5 days of work.
Please enquire for an initial overview and quote. Work can be done on a day rate or an hourly rate. We charge for travel mileage and VAT is applicable for these services.
Open Source Designs
We believe in sharing our work for the benefit of others, and so have listed case studies of our work including the reports themselves with the kind permission of the clients that we worked with.
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