At Dancing Rocks Permaculture Community, five rammed earth houses nestle at the base of the Tucson Mountains. After teaching permaculture for years and consulting on the designs for two Tucson co-housing communities, Sonora Cohousing and Milagro, whose motto is "in balance with nature," Barbara Rose has finally been able to manifest her own vision of a permaculture community.

The word permaculture was coined by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in Australia in the late 1970s to refer to integrated systems of food production, housing, appropriate technology and community development. When Rose happened upon Mollison's book, Permaculture: A Designer's Manual, in a local library in 1991, she found that permaculture brought together a variety of subjects she had been studying and implementing, from solar technology and natural building to organic gardening and wildlife conservation. It was a framework for living in a sustainable way.

The goal of permaculture, says Rose, is to "create and regenerate health for our families and the land."

Rose, her partner at the time Keith Kleber, and their two-year-old son came to the 20-acre property that is now Dancing Rocks as caretakers in 1985. At the time, there was only one building on the site, a 1930s stone well house.

Their daughter was born in that house in 1987; over time, the family developed a deep love for the land, but did not have the capital to purchase the property. When the bank started foreclosure proceedings on the owner in 1989, Rose and Kleber reluctantly began packing. Then Rose received an offer on land she owned in New Hampshire. She had refused to sell the land for development during the 1980s boom, but this offer was from a forestry foundation, for a sustainable forestry site.

It was "a miracle," says Rose. After purchasing the Dancing Rocks property, they built a rammed earth house in 1990, with sturdy walls formed by tamping soil, cement and water within frames.

In 1994, Rose started drawing up plans for four more rammed earth houses at Dancing Rocks. It took years of planning to mesh her vision of a small footprint of clustered houses with planning and zoning rules. But over the past year and a half, as the remaining four houses were built, the project has given work to 100 people, says Rose, who notes that keeping wealth in the local community is one tenet of permaculture. Materials used in construction also are as local and as "green" as possible, she adds.

Following the principle that "in every problem, there is an opportunity" -- a core belief in the practice of permaculture -- Rose used an old eroding road on the property as an opportunity to work with the contours of the land, developing a series of terraces to slow down and spread out the movement of water.

In addition, the houses' metal rooftops drain into cisterns that overflow into the terraces. Both the rooftop water harvesting system and the terraces slow down and spread out the flow of water, so that rather than causing flooding or erosion, heavy rains are beneficial.
The gardens around the houses thus have three times the amount of water they would naturally, says Rose, and there is no need to irrigate. Arched frames support vines on the east and west sides of the houses, with the south open to the winter sun. While the vegetation around the new houses needs time to fill in, the house built in 1990 has an abundant porch and tree canopy cool zone that extends 10-12 feet from the building.

Placing houses on areas where the vegetation had already been disturbed served to minimize the impact of construction, says Rose. The houses are oriented to receive maximal solar gain in the winter, with overhangs that block the intense summer sun. This passive solar design is complemented by solar panels to supply electricity.

Clustering the houses at the lower elevation area close to the road was key in minimizing impact, says Rose, because the property needs only one circular drive. The remainder of the property is in a conservation easement. The undeveloped saguaro-ironwood forest serves as a major wildlife corridor from the Tucson Mountains to the Santa Cruz River, and is one element in the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan.

Dancing Rocks Permaculture Community has been visited by tours from Prescott College, the Ecosa Institute, and the applied ecology class at Catalina Foothills High School, and was featured in the August issue of Western Region BUILDERnews Magazine.

Officials who have visited the property have been impressed.

"I suggest it's a perfect design for the wildland interface," says Northwest Fire Marshall Jim Grasham, noting that the earth and metal construction makes the houses virtually noncombustible. Even the floors are made of earth, he points out, referring to the tiles made of rammed earth and cement.

A real estate appraiser also was very positive about the homes, says Rose. She said that he regretted that the standard appraisal system required him to make deductions not only for the 3/4 baths, but also for design aspects such as a gray water system (which recycles shower and sink water for landscaping use) and composting toilets (which made it possible to build without septic or sewer hookups). But the rammed earth construction added value, and the 900-1000 square foot homes were appraised at values comparable to larger homes in the same neighborhood, says Rose.

Although smaller than the average local home, the houses at Dancing Rocks don't feel crowded, even when they are fully furnished. The high ceilings and open floor plans create a feeling of spaciousness, and the large windows draw the eye out into the abundance of the desert.

Rose, who had been living in the old well house since she and Kleber separated in 1999, moved into one of the new houses in the fall of 2003. She explains that she and Kleber are committed to living near each other to take care of their children and share work on the land and in their business, Silverbell Trading Company.

A health care practitioner purchased one of the other homes; Rose and Kleber are currently interviewing buyers for the remaining two houses and working with the Permaculture Credit Union, which can arrange mortgages.

To learn more about permaculture, see the Sonoran Permaculture Guild: http://www.sonoran permaculture.org