What We Do
At Living Systems Institute, we research, design, prototype, and test patterns of interactions between living things to regenerate a healthy and sustainable habitat for all living things. These manifest as projects, which we open to the community for participation.
In 2024, LSI is going through a phase of succession. Learn more here.
About The Founder
I come from a long line of farmers on the one side and a doctor and a lawyer on the other side. I supposed I have continued those lines. I was raised in suburbia, not on the farm, and finally became a lawyer myself. But I have also always been growing things.
My parents bought an acre near Golden in 1954. I was two. In 1980 my wife and I built our house on the same acre where I grew up. It is then that I began experimenting with how we relate to the living things in the places we occupy. Since college I had been reading The Mother Earth News about self-sufficiency and Organic Gardening and Farming about feeding ourselves organically. I finally had the opportunity to try out all those interesting ideas.
Jeannette and I had two kids to raise and educate. David and Amy. It was great for them on our acre with their grandparents next door. I was also involved in the Colorado Holistic Health Network and the North American Bioregional Congress when my kids were small. It occurred to me then that our society did not provide enough options for people. It occurred to me that we do not know how to make our communities self-sufficient or to feed ourselves organically. I decided to focus on learning how the existing system works and make my law practice a success and then come back to working on the changes our society needs.
I think that I am a slow learner. It took me eighteen years to get back to working on the changes our society needs. I finally did not have a choice. If I had continued practicing law I am certain that I would be dead by now.
In 2004 I did get back to what I always wanted to do. I sold my law practice, read the Permaculture Design Manual, and started a business called Organic Landscape Design. I met a guy with a non-profit looking to feed the homeless and we began building community gardens using sheet mulching. That led to the Applewood Permaculture Institute which we then incorporated as the Living Systems Institute. LSI was awarded its tax exempt status in 2013.
I hope to share with you, through this web site, what I have learned in my lifetime of trying things out.
David Braden
Founder of Living Systems Institute
The Living Systems Institute has an all volunteer board of directors and no paid staff. All of your donations will go to necessary administrative expenses such as liability insurance and the costs associated with publicizing this work such as the cost to maintain this web site.
Thank you for your support
Our Partners
