Regenerative landscape design · North Carolina Piedmont
We heal land and build community resiliency through the design of regenerative landscapes — life-giving sanctuaries that support local ecologies, reflect the beauty of your bioregion, and repair the wounds of extractive practices.
What we do
Roots First integrates ideas and practices from landscape architecture, ecological design, agrarian urbanism, environmental planning, and permaculture.
Services
For your home, school, neighborhood, or community space.
The foundational step from idea to reality. Remote or in-person, we clarify your vision and goals, discuss layout and circulation, and locate buildings, gardens, and orchards.
Land inventory, research, and mapping for better decisions.
A plan to guide your vision.
Design and care for plantings that support local ecology — from kitchen gardens to pollinator habitat.
Big-picture design for whole properties and community spaces — where everything will live and how it connects.
Hands-on learning and mentoring to live more regeneratively on your land — from our 6-week course to on-site workshops.
Our work
Regenerative landscapes designed across the Piedmont — gardens, food forests, and community spaces.
The course
Join our 6-week online design course: Bring Your Land to Life. Learn our process to envision and implement the transformation of your own — or a community — landscape, and create your own Regeneration Action Plan.
Cohort-based: lectures and discussion each week, plus hands-on workshops where you apply each skill to your own land.
Become an eco-visionary who can confidently transform your land into a life-giving landscape.
About
My name is Kristen Ford Haaf and I'm the founder of Roots First. I'm a landscape architect, also trained in environmental planning and permaculture. A true plant-lover, I bring decades of hands-on experience on projects of various scales. I'm also a mother who strives to build a home where my kids can eat home-grown produce and connect deeply with nature. My work isn't just a job — it's my passion.
The word regenerative comes from the Latin regenerare, meaning renewal. Regenerative design means designing in this spirit of renewal: creating places that allow life to thrive, restoring wildlife habitat, building local resiliency to damaging climate events, and designing within planetary boundaries.
We work with an amazing hand-selected network of landscape architects, ecologists, environmental educators, graphic designers, and gardeners.
Contact
We're rooted in the Piedmont bioregion of North Carolina, with remote consultations available.
The difference