The Cultivated Commons

What We Do

From overlooked
to overflowing

Cultivated Commons is a nonprofit community land trust transforming spaces we have learned to walk past without a second thought: utility corridors, development setbacks, abandoned lots, brownfields, and other devalued locations. We restore lands to include wildlife habitat and biodiversity, stormwater management, carbon sequestration, food production and public art. Utilizing permaculture design and people power, we cultivate these forgotten lands to social and ecological abundance: Commons stewarded and governed by the same neighbors who enjoy them.

What is a Cultivated Commons?

Our Commons
cultivate…

Social and Ecological Corridors

Our commons are made for people as much as for wildlife. Each one is designed for human occupation and interaction, and is open and accessible to the neighborhoods around it. That might be as simple as a trail winding through the trees, or as grand as a large pavilion for gathering. Along the way, these corridors reconnect fragmented habitat, supporting native wildlife movement, pollinator networks, and biodiversity recovery.

Stormwater Infrastructure

Swales, berms, and perennial plantings in these corridors manage stormwater naturally, helping municipalities meet green infrastructure goals. We look for sites that can redirect and absorb runoff from big storms, returning it to the soil where it can become so much more: buffer against drought, rain gardens for mosquito-munching frogs, and fuel for free-to-eat orchards.

Food Forests

Speaking of eating, we prioritize sites in walking distance to neighborhoods. We cultivate a wide variety of important ecosystem plants, and we make sure that many of them are delicious and medicinal for the folks who live nearby. Imagine, instead of driving to the convenience store for a processed snack in a plastic bag, strolling to your local park to see what might be fruiting.

Public Art and Placemaking

Whether it's decorative brackets on a shelter, painted lanterns, unique wildlife habitats, or sculptures, we commit to creating spaces with a true sense of place. Every commons should feel like it belongs to its own neighborhood and could not be mistaken for anywhere else.

Community Conversation

A commons only works when it fits the people it serves. We facilitate conversations with the community each commons will serve, and weave their unique needs and character into the design, so what we build reflects the place and the people who will use it.

The Commons as Infrastructure

A place to
pass through.
A place to stay.

A commons isn't just land to protect, it's land people inhabit. Every corridor restored is designed as a neighborhood amenity: a living path where residents can walk, linger, forage, and connect with one another without ever needing a car.

These corridors provide connection to community assets like greenways, schools, farmers markets, and friends through the existing environments while restoring the relationships between neighbors — human, animal, and plant.

The goal is a network of accessible commons threading through the region, stitching communities back together one overlooked parcel at a time.

Illustration of two people walking through a cultivated commons — gardens, trees, a dog, and homes connected by green corridors

How We Work

Our model is legally sound, community owned, and ecologically driven.

Step 01

Identify Marginal Land

We partner with landowners, municipalities, and neighborhoods to identify underutilized parcels — setbacks, corridors, and fragments — suitable for transformation.

Step 02

Listening and Facilitation

We engage the community to learn what is lacking in their neighborhood, and just as importantly, what is already celebrated there. Those needs, stories, and strengths guide everything that follows.

Step 03

Design Ecologically

Using permaculture design principles, we create layered food forest systems engineered to deliver measurable stormwater, habitat, and biodiversity outcomes.

Step 04

Install with Community

We guide students, volunteers, and neighbors to install the commons infrastructure — building relationships and skills while establishing the ecological foundation.

Step 05

Protect in Perpetuity

Conservation easements are a proven way for land trusts to legally protect restored lands from development forever — while community stewards supply the hearts and hands to care for them.

Step 06

Supporting

CC helps establish a governing body and stewards to provide for the continuing care of each commons, while remaining a repository of knowledge and resources the network can draw on to maintain and grow their commons.

Who We Are

The people
behind the work

Joey Burnett

Co-Founder & Chief Steward

Joey is an architect, maker, and permaculture designer based in Hendersonville, NC, with a deep commitment to ecological restoration in overlooked urban spaces. Through his decade of work in architecture, he saw an unfinished picture on each project — how will this project integrate into the community and environment at large.

With a background spanning ecological design, community organizing, and conservation strategy, Joey cofounded The Cultivated Commons to prove that the most transformative land is often the land no one else is looking at and how these lands can become the shared commons that define a community.

Permaculturist Architect Maker Artist

Aweed Nyoka

Co-Founder & Chief Naturalist

As a Marine Corps officer and climate scientist, Aweed has seen the darkness we spread when we view strangers as suspect and nature as a commodity. His goal in cofounding Cultivated Commons is to learn, practice, and share better ways to relate to our neighbors — human and beyond — and to the land we all share.

From protecting hikers and endangered species as a ranger, to risking arrest in non-violent activism, to restoring fire-blighted mountainscapes, Aweed has served the more-than-human world for years. Only for the last few has he called Hendersonville home, but he is honored to continue serving here by bringing Commons back to the people.

Ecologist Carver Storyteller Solarpunk

Get Involved

Let's cultivate
something together.

Whether you're a landowner, a municipal partner, a grant maker, or simply a neighbor who wants to help — we'd love to hear from you.

Thank you for reaching out.

We'll be in touch soon — the commons is growing, one relationship at a time.

Common Ground. Uncommon Abundance.

From overlookedto overflowing

Our Commonscultivate…