You watched a Geoff Lawton YouTube video. A drone glides over green ridgelines stitched with contour swales. The narrator points to a chain of small dams catching every drop of rain. The camera pans to a chicken tractor on a freshly forked bed. By the end of the 12 minutes you are convinced this is how every farm should look. The next morning you walk out into your suburban Pennsylvania backyard and try to figure out which parts of that vision actually translate.
This guide is the honest answer. We cover what Zaytuna Farm actually is and where it sits, how Geoff Lawton built it from degraded cattle pasture, the specific permaculture installations that made it famous, the global Permaculture Research Institute (PRI) network it anchors, what a US permaculture-curious gardener can genuinely take home, and the parts of the Zaytuna playbook that do not survive a US winter.
Zaytuna Farm sits at 1158 Pinchin Road, The Channon, in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, about 20 kilometres outside Lismore. According to the official Zaytuna Farm website, the property is approximately 66 acres (around 27 hectares) of subtropical land that was a degraded cattle paddock before Lawton began the transformation.
Geoff Lawton is an Australian permaculture designer, educator, and direct student of Bill Mollison, the Tasmanian academic who co-founded permaculture with David Holmgren in the 1970s. Lawton went on to found the Permaculture Research Institute (PRI), which the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) lists in its civil society directory as headquartered at The Channon, NSW 2480, Australia. PRI's role is to teach permaculture, certify designers, and document case studies of regenerative land transformation worldwide.
Zaytuna Farm is PRI's home base and primary demonstration site. The farm is intentionally not open to drop-in visitors. According to the PRI contact page, "Zaytuna Farm is not open to the public" outside of scheduled courses, events, and arranged tours.
When Lawton acquired Zaytuna in the early 2000s, the land carried the signature of decades of overgrazing: thin topsoil, eroded gullies, scoured pastures, and minimal tree cover. The first design priority was water. According to Verge Permaculture's 2010 review of Zaytuna Farm yields, the property now hosts a chain of small dams, kilometres of contour swales, and continuous food forest plantings on what was bare ground twenty years earlier.
Contour swales are the centerpiece. A swale is a shallow ditch cut precisely on the contour line, with the soil piled into a downhill berm. Rain that hits the slope no longer races to the valley floor. It pools in the ditch, sinks into the berm, and feeds tree roots planted along the downhill edge. The Permaculture Apprentice food forest with swales layout guide notes that this single intervention can convert seasonal runoff into a year-round subsurface water source, which is exactly what happened across Zaytuna.
Zaytuna is intentionally a teaching site. Walk the farm and almost every installation is labelled, photographable, and documented for course participants.
Contour swales and dams. Multiple swale runs feeding small dams at different elevations, capturing rainfall on a 27-hectare catchment.
Food forests. Multi-layered plantings featuring emergent canopy (eucalypt, paulownia, large native trees), high canopy fruit (mango, mulberry, avocado, citrus), medium shrubs (guava, pigeon pea, coffee), herbaceous layer (comfrey, sweet potato), and ground covers. A 2023 Discover Permaculture video tour of Zaytuna's food forests documents the layered structure walking through several established plantings.
Banana circles. Six to eight banana plants arranged in a circle around a central composting pit. Kitchen scraps and chopped biomass go into the pit, decompose, and feed the bananas. Sweet potato and pumpkin sprawl on the outside ring.
Chicken tractors. Movable timber-framed coops that travel across freshly prepped beds. The chickens scratch, fertilise, eat weed seeds, and prep the bed for the next planting. The system gives the farm protein, eggs, and pest control while preparing soil.
Mandala gardens. Keyhole bed layouts designed around a central access point, maximising growing area while keeping every plant within arm's reach.
Earthworks and aquaculture courses. According to the official Zaytuna Farm courses and events page, the farm hosts Earthworks and Aquaculture intensives in addition to the flagship PDC, with hands-on dam construction and pond polyculture training.
The Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) is the standardised 72-hour curriculum that Bill Mollison established. According to a recent Zaytuna PDC listing, the on-site PDC runs as an immersive 12-day course at The Channon, taught directly on the farm's installations.
Lawton's parallel reach is much larger via the online PDC and video subscriptions hosted through Discover Permaculture. Between the in-person PDCs, the online program, and the YouTube channel, Lawton has been one of the most prolific permaculture educators in the world over the last 20 years.
The Practical Food Garden Workshop listings show shorter weekend formats focused on a single skill (kitchen garden design, food forest establishment, earthworks layout) for participants who cannot commit to the full PDC.
The Channon sits in the Northern Rivers, one of the most reliably wet, mild parts of mainland Australia. The climate supports bananas, sugarcane, taro, citrus, mango, avocado, macadamia, and a dense year-round growing season.
For a US gardener in Pennsylvania or Minnesota, that climate match does not exist. The principles transfer (water harvesting, layered planting, animal integration, observation first). The plant lists do not. Many of the famous Zaytuna installations (banana circles, in-ground tropical food forests) only work in USDA zones 9b through 11.
The cold-climate workaround is the same one US permaculture practitioners have been refining for years: substitute hardy analogues. Apple, pear, plum, mulberry, persimmon, hazel, currant, gooseberry, and rhubarb on contour swales produces a structurally similar layered food forest that survives a real winter. Verge Permaculture, a Canadian PRI-affiliated demonstration site, makes the climate translation explicit by documenting cold-temperate analogues of Zaytuna's tropical designs.
Watching Zaytuna footage is inspiring. Translating it to a US backyard requires picking the right lessons.
| What transfers cleanly | What does not transfer |
| Contour swales (any climate with slope and rainfall) | Banana circles outside USDA zones 9b to 11 |
| Chicken tractor systems (any backyard with hens allowed) | Year-round outdoor growing without season extension |
| Multi-layered food forest design | Mango, avocado, macadamia (north of zone 9) |
| Mandala / keyhole bed geometry | Sub-clover, kikuyu, summer growing greens in winter |
| Observe-first design discipline | Lawton's exact species list verbatim |
| Animal integration into garden cycles | Dam construction (varies wildly by US permitting) |
Source: Composite of Verge Permaculture review of Zaytuna systems and Permaculture Apprentice food forest swale design guide
Zaytuna's lasting contribution is not its banana circles. It is the demonstration that the permaculture method (observe, design with water first, layer plants, integrate animals, prove it on real degraded land) can be taught, repeated, and adapted across climates. Geoff Lawton has spent 25 years showing that the framework is more robust than any specific species list. A US gardener watching Zaytuna videos should focus on the design moves, not the mango trees. The contour swale concept is 2,000 years old (the Romans used it, China's loess plateau restoration relied on it). The chicken tractor is climate-agnostic. The food forest layering applies wherever trees, shrubs, and herbs grow. Translation, not imitation, is the lesson.
Zaytuna is Lawton's lush, well-watered demonstration. The counterpart is the Greening the Desert project in the Jordan Valley, where Lawton documented permaculture earthworks installed on degraded saline desert land. The pairing matters because it shows the method working at both ends of the climate spectrum: subtropical Australia and arid Middle East.
The Greening the Desert footage from the original 2001 site and the larger 2009 project established Lawton's international reputation and pushed permaculture earthworks into mainstream conversation. Together with Zaytuna, the two sites are the most-cited demonstration pair in the global permaculture canon.
The flagship 12-day immersive Permaculture Design Certificate course is hosted on the farm. Check the official courses page for the next dates and pricing. The course typically runs once or twice a year and books well in advance.
Shorter weekend and one-week formats focused on a single discipline: kitchen garden design, food forest establishment, dam-and-swale earthworks. Cheaper and shorter than a full PDC.
Lawton's online PDC has trained thousands of designers worldwide who could not travel to Australia. Look at the Discover Permaculture site for the current online enrolment options.
The Discover Permaculture YouTube channel hosts site tours, technique demonstrations, and Q+A sessions. Most of the Zaytuna footage you have seen circulating online comes from this channel.
Permaculture Research Institute graduates have set up demonstration sites in most US states. A short list at the PRI contact directory can point you to a nearby PDC instructor whose climate matches yours.
Start with our free 7-Layer Backyard Guide and apply the Zaytuna design lessons to your local climate from day one. Read the Free Guide
Zaytuna Farm is at 1158 Pinchin Road, The Channon, in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, Australia, about 20 kilometres outside Lismore. It sits on roughly 66 acres (27 hectares) of subtropical land that was former cattle pasture before Geoff Lawton's transformation.
Geoff Lawton is an Australian permaculture designer, educator, and founder of the Permaculture Research Institute (PRI). He was a direct student of Bill Mollison, the Tasmanian academic who co-founded permaculture in the 1970s. Lawton is widely known for the Zaytuna demonstration site and the Greening the Desert project in Jordan.
The farm is not open to the general public for drop-in visits. Access is through scheduled Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) courses, Earthworks intensives, Practical Food Garden workshops, and pre-arranged farm tours. Check the official Zaytuna Farm courses page for upcoming dates.
Pricing varies by year and includes accommodation and meals on the farm. Check the official Zaytuna Farm courses page for current pricing. The course runs as a 12-day immersive on-site format following Bill Mollison's original 72-hour PDC curriculum.
Contour swales, a chain of small dams, multi-layered food forests, banana circles, chicken tractor systems, mandala gardens, and aquaculture ponds. The farm is intentionally designed as a teaching site with most installations labelled and documented for PDC students.
Zaytuna is in subtropical Australia and grows bananas, mangoes, sugarcane, macadamia, and other tropical species year-round. The design principles (water harvesting, layered planting, animal integration) transfer to any US climate, but the species list does not. US food forests use cold-hardy analogues: apple, pear, plum, mulberry, persimmon, hazel, currant.
PRI is the permaculture education and certification organisation founded by Geoff Lawton, headquartered at Zaytuna Farm in The Channon, NSW 2480, Australia. It is listed in the UN Convention to Combat Desertification civil society directory. PRI teaches permaculture, certifies designers, and documents global case studies of regenerative land restoration.
Zaytuna Farm is Geoff Lawton's 66-acre subtropical permaculture demonstration site in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales, transformed over 20+ years from degraded cattle pasture into a working laboratory of swales, dams, food forests, banana circles, chicken tractors, and PDC courses. It anchors the Permaculture Research Institute and has trained thousands of designers in person and many more online via Discover Permaculture. For US gardeners, the design principles (water first, layered plants, integrated animals, observe before acting) transfer cleanly. The plant lists do not. Apple replaces mango. Hazel replaces macadamia. The contour swale stays exactly the same.
Continue your global permaculture learning: read our Permaculture Around the World pillar guide and our deep dive on permaculture sectors next.