Background of Founder / Lead Designer, Derek Downey:

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In 2005, while studying BioSystems Engineering at the UC Davis, Derek and his housemates turned a water guzzling lawn that wrapped around their house into a food forest with many layers of productivity, including nut and fruit trees, berries, herbs, vegetables, and lots of compost and mulch. He also started keeping bees in this garden. At this time, Derek worked part time at an organic student farm as well as directed Project Compost, a student led group that collected and composted hundreds of tons of food waste from campus kitchens and nearby city cafes and restaurants and distributed the resulting compost (called “black gold”) to gardens throughout the area.  In 2010, Derek was honored by the City of Davis and 4 regional mayors with the first annual Eco-Hero of the Year Award for his work helping the UC Davis campus and City of Davis in developing composting programs that carry on to this day. 

 

After earning his degree in Biological Systems Engineering, Derek worked as an engineer/researcher helping to develop innovative composting and anaerobic digestion technology both at the Yolo County Central Landfill and at the Biogas Energy Project at UC Davis.  Despite his young career in engineering, his interest in permaculture kept growing, and in 2011, he completed a year long Permaculture Design Certification at the Regenerative Design Institute, led by Penny Livingston and other permaculture designers/educators. That year, Derek designed and led a volunteer effort to build the Davis Bee Sanctuary, a permaculture garden and apiary demonstrating solutions to the growing bee crisis, including drought tolerant gardening strategies, such as hugelkultur, and plantings that fed bees and people in the dry hot climate of California’s central valley. He also founded Davis Bee Charmers, a local effort to offer services that would help address the bee crisis, including relocating swarms and building alternative bee hives designed to improve the health of bees. In his over 15 years of beekeeping in California, Derek safely relocated hundreds of swarms and relocated hives from structures to avoid their being exterminated. 

 

Derek would later move to Village Homes, famous in the permaculture community for its passive solar designed homes, water harvesting swales and a forest of fruit trees that were planted in the late 1970s by architect Michael Corbett. Bill Mollison, the founder of the permaculture movement, who featured this neighborhood in his Global Gardener TV series, said “It’s the nicest place in the world, I think, for human settlements.” One summer day, Derek was visiting a plum orchard in Village Homes when he ran into the recognizable face of Geoff Lawton, a student of Mollison’s and world renowned permaculture designer and teacher. Lawton and his camera man were there to see the abundance for themselves and document it, and so began 3 days of giving them a tour of not only his neighborhood but also other relevant permaculture demonstrations in the town of Davis, CA.  You can still watch Lawton's take on Village Homes in “America’s Forgotten Food Forest Suburb." 

 

Living in Village Homes, the site of a 60 acre permaculture food forest, gave Derek the inspiration to do landscape design full time, with a permaculture and ecological framework. While living there, Derek would get to meet two other inspiring designers who came to check out the neighborhood. The first was Brad Lancaster, a designer and teacher in Arizona specializing in rainwater harvesting. The second was Mark Shepherd, whose presentation Derek attended at the Permaculture Voices Conference in San Diego. Mark invited Derek to come see his amazing broad-acre New Forest Farm in Viola, Wisconsin, which Derek got to see first hand a few years later.  Little did Derek know at the time that he and his family would actually relocate to Wisconsin many years later.

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From 2013 to 2014, to advance his landscape dreams, Derek attended the Ecological Landscaper Immersion program at the Permaculture Skills Center in Sebastopol, CA, led by the Permaculture Artisan Erik Ohlsen. This was the only program of its kind in the country and featured world renowned experts in the field of permaculture. Some of his mentors there included the late Toby Hemenway (Permaculture Design), Paul Stamets (Fungi Solutions), Robert Kourik (Drip Irrigation), Brock Dolman (Ecological Literacy), Darren Doherty (Keyline Planning and Holistic management), Elaine Ingham (Soil Ecology and Compost Teas), Peter Hirst (Biochar), Andrew Millison (Broadscale Water Management Strategies), Michael Ogden (Cleaning Water), and Eric Toensmeier (Carbon Farming and Regenerative Design). 

 

In 2014, Derek and his fellow Permaculture Skills Center student John Scott joined forces to start offering ecological landscape design build services through Whole System Designs. They also took an intensive through the American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association to develop the skills of properly designing rainwater harvesting systems. From 2014-2019, Derek offered his design/engineering/construction skills through Whole System Designs, which was recognized by the city of Davis in 2017 for its Environmental work, including it’s landscape restorations and water harvesting earthworks at the Davis Food Coop. Whole System Designs did full-on designs, installations, and maintenance of landscapes that incorporated rainwater catchment, greywater systems, drip irrigation, food forests, natural drainage, edible gardens, pollinator habitat, bee hives and other permaculture elements.  Derek's designs included landscapes for residential sites, health clinics, schools, and businesses. Whole System Designs became a popular fixture in the community for several years until the pandemic caused a significant halt to the business, and Derek and John pursued other avenues. With the promise of land in Wisconsin, Derek and his family decided to relocate to the northwoods by Lake Superior where Derek’s son could also connect with his Ojibwe ancestral roots and culture. After some time developing a homestead, learning new skills, and observing the climate and  features of the Wisconsin Northwoods, he gave birth to Abundant Landscapes LLC in order to offer his skills to help develop resilient and productive landscapes and homesteads in the Northwoods as well as continue offering designs/consultations to the West Coast where he lived most of his life.