The collective

One practice, so healthy land spreads faster than any one firm could carry it.

Designers, builders, engineers, educators and chefs who work as one practice instead of competing for the same jobs. Whoever is right for your project leads it; everyone else is behind them.

01 — Who we are

We design healthy land systems, build them, and teach others to do the same.

We design healthy land systems, build them and teach others to do the same, returning our profits to community benefit and land trusts. You direct the vision; the ethics keep every choice honest.

That land trust is the long game and it is the point. Profits return to a growing network of held property supporting seed security, biodiversity, food and water security, and natural reserves for living, education and hospitality. Hub gardens and nature spaces closing the loop between the people and the land that feed each other.

The method does not change with the size of the job: design, build, maintain, train, document, monitor. Start where it’s easy, grow as the land improves itself.

Sovereignty — own your food, your water, and the knowledge to keep them Opportunity — what we build is yours to run, and yours to pass on Sustainability — systems that get better with time rather than worse
02 — The people

Every one of them is a door into something.

Not CVs. What each person actually opens for the project in front of them.

Founder

Tavahn Ghazi

The design language, and the room

Designer, builder and chef. Carries the design language the whole practice draws in, and walks into the rooms where the work gets decided — restaurant groups, hospitality operators, and the people who own the land before they know what to do with it.

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Master designer

Neal Hegarty

Design authority, and the training pipeline

Sets the standard every drawing is held to, and mentors the bench of designers we certify. Two decades of built work behind him and the infrastructure record at Lake Atitlán that makes municipal work credible rather than aspirational.

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Earth hydration specialist

Jeremy Fellows

Anyone whose real problem is water

Ponds, catchment, hydration and living-water systems, built with volunteers and taught on the ground. Water is the first decision on any site and the fear most people are already carrying — he is the answer to it.

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Chef lead

Chris Fernandez

Every kitchen, bar and hospitality group

Head chef through serious California restaurants, then ran the largest catering conglomerate in America. Knows the farmers, the ordering, the inventory and the events. For any operator whose food system is quietly costing them their margin, he is the way in.

Systems & software

Khalob Freeborn

Retreats and hospitality that need software built for them

Bespoke software for retreats and hospitality — booking, operations and the systems a property actually runs on. Also builds the design engine that turns a site read into a costed, buildable plan.

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Master architect

Chick

Placeholder — brief out

Architecture at the scale where drawings need a stamp. Bio being written in his own words rather than invented here.

Events & advertising

Ginger

Placeholder — brief out

Event and advertising production. Bio being written in her own words rather than invented here.

To be announced

Gardner

Placeholder — brief out

Bio being written in their own words rather than invented here.

03 — Partners

The practices we build alongside.

Design & regeneration

CreaSol Permaculture

Regenerative design and farm systems on Lake Atitlán, and the working ground a great deal of our method was proven on.

Pending confirmation

Further partners

Two more partnerships are in conversation and will be named here once they are agreed rather than announced ahead of themselves.

04 — The lineage

A garden where people come to grow, eat, teach, and learn.

Twenty-three centuries ago, on the edge of Athens, a philosopher named Epicurus bought a walled garden and did something unusual for his time: he grew food on it, shared the meals that came off it, and taught anyone who walked in — men, women, and the enslaved alike — how to live well with less. People didn't call it a school. They called it, simply, the Garden.

It was never a lecture hall with a wall between teacher and student. It was a working piece of land that fed the people who tended it, and a community that turned a good life into something you could learn and carry home. The whole promise fit on a barley cake and a cup of water handed to you at the gate: sufficiency. Here you will do well to stay.

That is the oldest version of what we build. Every project we take on is a garden in the same sense — land designed to feed you, a table set from the ground it stands on, and the know-how to grow both, shared with everyone who joins. New instruments, ancient idea: people and land taking care of each other, and the knowledge spreading faster than any one of us could carry it.

"Stranger, here you will do well to tarry; here our highest good is pleasure."
— Inscription at the gate of Epicurus's Garden · Athens · c. 306 BCE
05 — Referrals

Bring us a project that sells, and you get a commission.

Member or not. Whether you have worked with us for years or you saw an ad this morning and thought of someone with land. If we cash a check, you get one too.

Send the introduction to info@ourcollectiveedge.com and tell us who they are and what they are trying to do. That is the whole process.

06 — Cooperative membership

As the collective grows, we open the books.

When we do, cooperative membership opens with it. If you can bring real value now, tell us and you will be at the top of the list. Five questions, one click each.