# What I Learned About the Regenerative Design Process After Accidentally Killing My Yard
So this is going to sound ridiculous, but my obsession with regenerative design started because I basically destroyed my apartment building’s tiny communal garden space. I’m talking about a patch of dirt maybe eight feet by twelve feet behind our building that the landlord let us use however we wanted. I was so excited to finally have outdoor space to experiment with that I immediately started planning this elaborate little ecosystem.
I’d been watching these YouTube videos about permaculture and reading articles about how buildings could actually help heal damaged land instead of just sitting on it. The whole concept blew my mind – like, what if construction actually made places better instead of worse? I started going down this rabbit hole about regenerative design, which is basically the idea that you don’t just minimize environmental damage, you actively restore natural systems.
Anyway, I was so pumped up on all this theory that I completely ignored the most basic step: understanding what the space actually was before trying to change it. I just marched out there with thirty-seven dollars worth of native plant seedlings from the farmer’s market and started digging. Within two weeks, everything was dead except for some aggressive mint that somehow took over half the space.
That failure sent me back to the research, and this time I found articles about how professional regenerative designers approach sites. There was this architect’s blog post about a community center project where she talked about something called “expanding circles of awareness,” and it made me realize I’d skipped about six crucial steps in my enthusiasm.
The first circle, apparently, is just spending time observing. Not planning, not digging, just watching what actually happens in the space. So I started sitting out in that sad little garden area at different times of day, taking notes like some kind of amateur scientist. Turns out the morning sun hit it for maybe two hours before the neighboring building blocked it. The soil got completely waterlogged every time it rained because of how the gutters drained. There were these weird dry patches where nothing would grow that I later realized were where people cut through to get to the alley.
I felt pretty dumb for not noticing this stuff before, but apparently even professional projects mess this up. I read about this housing development in Arizona where they spent thousands on desert landscaping that failed because nobody realized the site had been used as a car repair lot for decades and was full of oil contamination. The designer had to start over with soil remediation before any plants would survive.
The second circle is what they call understanding the site’s history. For my little garden patch, this meant asking my elderly neighbor Mrs. Chen what she remembered about the area. Turns out our building sits on what used to be a community orchard in the 1940s. She still had apple trees in her backyard from that era. The soil test I finally got (for fifteen bucks through the county extension office) showed it was actually really rich underneath all the construction compaction – it just needed to be loosened up and given some organic matter.
This historical research thing is apparently huge in professional regenerative design. I found this case study about a mixed-use development in Ohio where they discovered old aerial photos showing a creek that had been buried under the parking lot. Instead of just building on top, they actually daylit part of the creek and designed the buildings around the restored water flow. The whole project ended up managing stormwater for the entire neighborhood while creating this amazing community space.
For really big projects, designers work with ecologists and soil scientists to understand what the land looked like before any development happened. What plants grew there naturally? What animals lived there? How did water move through the landscape? They’re trying to figure out what the land “wants” to become and then design with those natural patterns instead of fighting them.
The third circle is thinking about how the site connects to larger ecological systems. Even for my tiny garden, this mattered. I learned that our neighborhood is part of a migration corridor for certain birds. The native plants I eventually chose weren’t just pretty – they provided food and shelter that connected to green spaces throughout the city.
There’s this architect whose work I’ve been following online, and she talks about projects where they trace watersheds and wildlife corridors across entire regions. She worked on a school campus that restored prairie habitat connecting to parks miles away, creating what’s essentially a highway for butterflies and birds right through suburban development.
What really changed how I think about this stuff was reading about material choices in regenerative design. It’s not just about using sustainable materials – it’s about choosing materials that can eventually return to natural cycles. Untreated wood that can decompose, natural plasters made from local clay, stone that doesn’t require toxic sealants. One project I read about used reclaimed lumber from barn demolitions and agricultural waste for insulation.
Even construction practices matter. I learned about projects where contractors have to protect existing soil biology during building, avoiding heavy equipment on areas that will become landscape, carefully preserving topsoil that took decades to develop. There was this residential project in Colorado where they discovered the soil had been completely compacted by previous construction, so they spent weeks decompacting it and reintroducing beneficial fungi before planting anything.
My apartment building garden project got a lot less ambitious after learning all this, but it actually worked the second time around. I spent three months just loosening the soil and adding compost. I chose plants that could handle the weird light conditions and connected to the existing ecosystem. I created a tiny rain garden in the corner that solved the waterlogging problem.
The results weren’t Instagram-worthy, but they were real. The herbs I planted actually grew instead of immediately dying. Birds started showing up – not just pigeons, but actual songbirds that apparently needed the specific seeds my native grasses provided. My neighbor started sitting out there in the evenings because it felt peaceful in a way it hadn’t before.
That experience made me understand something I’d been reading about but not really grasping: regenerative design only works if the humans using the space feel genuinely connected to it. All the ecological restoration in the world doesn’t matter if people don’t want to be there.
I’ve been following the progress of that Ohio community center I mentioned, and the updates are amazing. Three years later, the prairie restoration hosts dozens of bird species that weren’t there before. Kids from the neighborhood play in the constructed wetlands. The building uses sixty percent less energy than code requires, but what really strikes me is that community meetings apparently run longer now because nobody wants to leave.
The more I read about regenerative design projects, the more I see this pattern. Success isn’t just measured in carbon sequestration or stormwater management – though those matter. It’s measured in whether people linger in the spaces, whether kids want to explore them, whether the community feels more connected to the natural world around them.
What fascinates me is how this approach completely flips conventional design thinking. Instead of deciding what you want to build and then figuring out how to make it less harmful, you start by understanding what the land wants to become and then figure out how human needs can fit into that vision. It takes more time, costs more upfront, requires different expertise. But the buildings and landscapes that result aren’t just less damaging – they’re actively beneficial.
That’s what I’ve learned from diving into regenerative design process: it’s not about doing less bad, it’s about actively healing the world through the spaces we create. Even if you’re just working with eight feet by twelve feet of dirt behind an apartment building.
Jeff writes about bringing bits of nature into everyday living spaces — not as a designer, but as a curious renter who experiments, fails, and keeps trying again. He shares what he’s learned about light, plants, and small changes that make big differences for real people living in ordinary apartments.
