Farm-To-Table Tuesday: Laura Sweany & Always Growing Design
Lacamas Creek Farm
Chehalis Region, Central Washington State, USA
Written by Ava Clennon, Cascadia Eco Retreats
10.15.2026
Welcome to Farm To Table Tuesday!
At Fifth Dimension & Cascadia Eco Retreats, our shared mission is to put people in touch with their own community - in a way that adds up to healing Planet and People.
We believe passionately in “Earth Care - People Care - Fair Share”
That philosophy was first penned by an Earth-conscious guy named Bill Mollison… waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back before the Internet even existed. When folks got all their information from books.
Like, drafted out with a literal pen. And paper. → Book ←
Mollison studied and wrote about very practical methods for healing land, people and economies. As we journey back to our collective roots, we find those lush green leaves - and the fruits of earth steward labor - thriving everywhere.
Fast forward - the World Wide Web (aka www.) has made the concept of permaculture and creating sustainable, healed ecosystems available to the whole world! For free! What a miracle of human achievement.
Finally! You (…yes YOU!!!) can access how to deal with climate anxiety and create Earth-healing solutions. Anywhere. Everywhere. Big or small, we need to heal it all. Your two hands can work on solutions for Earth right around you. Each of us have the power to heal our ecosystems and create a thriving lush land for people, animals and plants.
And it doesn’t even require a library card and stamps.
(…ask your grandparents if you don’t get the joke…)
The Organic Grower’s School has an excellent free PDF download to inspire you on your journey with learning practical Permaculture:
→ The Principles of Permaculture by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren ←
PERMACULTURE SOLUTIONS IN ACTION
Today we’re celebrating a powerful Pacific Northwest solution-maker:
Laura Sweany & Always Growing Design
Laura started in Seattle Washington as a Permaculture Professional, creating public gardens and thriving food forest spaces. She helped build the beautiful → Lichton Springs P-Patch Community Garden ← (which happens to be just a few blocks from where I live in the Greenlake neighborhood!)
She moved to a home base at Raintree Nursery where she → produced over 200 videos ← educating the public on permaculture in action around the Puget Sound. She was also a founding member of the → Northwest Permaculture Convergence. ←
Now she works as an independent consultant, specializing in edible and sustainable landscapes across Washington State.
Truly - her dedicated hard work and passion for Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share have made the permaculture movement a tangible reality. We’re honored to celebrate a Permaculture Ambassador who has impacted the lives of so many in Seattle, the greater Puget Sound Region, and across the whole of Cascadia in the Pacific Northwest.
Now Laura’s building a farmstead in Onalaska at Lacamas Creek Farm - soon to host ecotours and interns! Reach out now and reserve your place
Take a few minutes to check out
→ Always Growing Design! ←
We were blessed to have Laura visit Fifth Dimension during our Team Planning Weekend in September. She generously brought the most luscious, gorgeous, fragrantly fresh-picked vegetables and fruits from her homestead for our Farm To Table Family Feasts.
I still dream of the irresistible taste of those pears, tomatoes and carrots… and the sound of Laura’s infectious out-of-box laughter lighting up the land.
Here at → Fifth Dimension’s 5-acre Retreat Space ← we LOVE to nurture big loud laughter and Community Solutions! Thank you Laura for sharing your bountiful open heart, brilliant insights, deep knowledge, and abundant spirit.
Laura brought us a type of table grape I’d never experienced before named → Interlaken ←
Massively prolific and extremely early fruiting, Interlaken Grape was originally bred in New York State and is perfectly suited to the North. The clusters of miniature green seedless champagne-style grapes are so flavorful and juicy it feels like a little sensory explosion biting into each one. Divine! Can’t wait to propagate some and share the goodness!
You may see Laura at our year round end-of-month Eco Retreats at Fifth Dimension! But if you miss her, you can still observe her work unfolding. During her visit we sparked the inspiration for a Water-Harvesting Swale to rehabilitate the Children’s Enchanted Forest that had been cleared by bulldozer. We were proud to follow through with her vision and create that swale together at our Harvest Moon September Retreat.
→ Check out our permaculture project ← inspired by Laura’s advice, developing the Children’s Enchanted Forest and putting in water-harvesting systems that heal the landscape during the winter wet season.
You are warmly invited to contact Laura for permaculture consultations that are tailored to heal and create abundance in your own realm. Her clients come in all sizes - from backyard food forests, patio planters and pocket gardens to sustainable landscaping in schools, parks, businesses - up to larger land stewardship and farm design.
From our family to yours, we send so much love
Fifth Dimension and Cascadia Eco Retreats
Contact us at Cascadia Eco Retreats for more info on our epic End Of Month Celebrations at Fifth Dimension, your Spa Under The Stars!
