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As a terrain owner, you have a piece of this earth under your stewardship. You have the chance to create a garden of eden and make a better place of this planet. We believe that it’s our mission as Commensalist to guide you towards a future proof landscape design that is as drought tolerant and low maintenance as possible.
We come and visit you for an intense brainstorming session and a site observation. The garden and landscape architects of the Commensalist team then translate this information into a blueprint for a better world.
Starting your dream property is maybe one of the most impactful events in your life. To do this you want to surround you with the right people, but most important, with people that are on your same frequency. Although we can technically help everyone with starting their dream property, we can only help if the ‘connection’ is there. Therefore, we always first propose an online consult of one hour. This way we get to know each other and feel whether we are a match for each other.
It is perfectly possible to take you through our entire design process from A-Z to design your dream property, via online media. Thanks to technological advancements we can use all sort of data such as satellite imagery, LIDAR maps, soil profiles, cloud data and much more. But to be honest: we prefer to meet you in person. We are not born to watch screens. We like to listen to your stories, feel your land, walk around your property, smell the earth, taste local food, and explore the region. The more senses we can use, the completer and more holistic the design will be.
We cannot design your dream property without knowing you and your stories. We design properties in the same way nature lets trees grow. Everything starts with the seed. Why do you want to start this project? What is your biggest motivator? A big part of our design process is to translate your core values, passion, and strengths to a single piece of DNA. If a seed is not certain of its own DNA, it will never be able to grow in a majestic tree. If the DNA of the people wanting to start a dream project is clear, everything becomes possible, because every decision we make will be permeated with your basic DNA and so your property will always match your lifestyle and core values.
DNA workshop: in every design package we offer we include a dream to action workshop. We prefer to do this in real life, but we can do this online too if necessary. With Commensalist® we use the best practices of Permaculture design, Holistic Management, Agroforestry, Agroecology, Food Forestry, Market Gardening, and much more.
We have your DNA in place now, who you are, what drives you and what gives you energy. But, before we start the designing process, we need to do some more soul searching. You can start a farm in a thousand colours and forms. You can decide to focus on only the farming aspect, or you can choose to combine the farm with a Bed and Breakfast, a hotel, a restaurant, an event space, an art gallery, a shop, a theme park of whatever you like. We design projects very holistically, so all your desired aspects of your property go together as smoothly as possible.
To design the farm-part of your property itself, we also need to decide on a lot of factors. A workshop to really get to the idea of your ideal farm vision is indispensable. In this workshop we will ask ourselves what tasks give you energy and what other to do’s drain your energy. One of the goals of a farm is to produce the most delicious, healthy, and vital food. Once you have this produce, there are literally hundreds of ways in how we can deliver or process this. And even more possibilities to market and deliver the wonderful products to consumers.
Once we have your personal DNA in place, you know what your dreamlife on your land looks like, you have an idea on what you want to grow and how you would like to process and distribute your food, we can start designing the farm: yay!
Do you have your dream property already? We are glad for you because it can be a whole adventure on its own. You have not found your dream location yet? Perfect too! Thanks to the previous workshops you know exactly what your DNA is and how your ideal farm life looks like. This makes it a lot easier to narrow down the region and the requirements. In this workshop we work together to narrow down all possible locations, the acreage of land you are looking for, which altitude, near which cities, in which country/countries, etcetera. At the end of this workshop, you will know exactly what you are looking for and you are off to go on property hunt. We do offer this service: finding a top 3 of possible properties, but this is a fun adventure we would not want you to miss out on.
Every good design starts with observation. We look together at different maps, we walk together on your property, looking at the soil, the plants, wildlife. We observe the microclimates: warm zones and cold zones, dry zones, and humid zones. We brainstorm about what the most logical way is to integrate all the ingredients to create a harmonious place. We make an outline to create a master plan sketch, we decide on the zones, on the flows of water, energy, and work. This is the skeleton of our design.
Once we have mapped out the zones of the property, it is time for our team to really put in the sweat. With all gathered all information our team of agronomists, agro-marketers and designers create the best possible farm which will make the most positive impact on the planet AND on your life.
Founder Louis De Jaeger has travelled the world for five years, has lived in several places in France, stands up for a sustainable future, is a permaculture expert, founder of ByeByeGrass.eu, promoter of food forests and regularly appears in the news.
Through his many experiences from different adventures around the world, he has acquired a critical view of the world and interesting insights and life lessons.
He likes to share this richness and expertise with the public in order to inspire people. On the press page you can find out what he writes about, what projects he is working on and what his visions are.