Long-term work
Sweetgrass Roots
Places designed so the healthier life is the easier life.
Sweetgrass Roots is my long-term plan for an institution that turns one idea into land, buildings, food, learning and daily life. It is a plan and a philosophy today, not an operating organization.
Why it exists
We shape our environments, and then they shape us. The room, the route, the food nearby, the group and the calendar all make some things easy and others hard, long before anyone decides anything.
Food, health, housing and land are usually treated as separate problems. Sweetgrass Roots treats them as one system, because the place a person lives shapes how they eat, move, rest, learn and belong.
What it is for
- Food. Food systems that feed people well, and a part in ending famine.
- Health. Places where health, movement and rest are part of daily life.
- Land. Regenerating land, and stewarding it for the long term.
- Software. Software that improves how we live with each other and with the planet.
- Advocacy. Speaking up for the same goals in public life.
What it would build
The plan names the kinds of places and programs Sweetgrass Roots would build:
- Villages. Regenerative real estate and village development, designed for light, air, food and shared space.
- Wellness. Wellness and training centers.
- Academies. Whole-person education where all ages learn together, with movement, craft, gardening and philosophy in the same day.
- Farms. Regenerative agriculture and local food systems.
- Studios. Creative expression and storytelling.
- Civic life. Civic capacity in the places it works.
It would start in Middle Tennessee.
The name
Sweetgrass is best planted by putting living roots into the ground, and it thrives along disturbed edges. The plan follows the same idea: bring working models to the places that need them most, rather than scattering good intentions and hoping.
The design test
Every Sweetgrass environment should be judged by the behaviors, relationships, attention and health it makes more likely, without asking people for constant effort to get there.
The questions it is meant to answer:
- Design without coercion. Can environmental design make healthy behavior easier without becoming controlling?
- Stewardship over extraction. Can capital be aligned with stewardship, so land and people are better off for it?
- One coherent system. Can property, agriculture, wellness, education and the arts work as one system without collapsing under their own complexity?
- Beyond the founder. What governance protects the mission after the founder is gone?