1. Biologic Design
Wetland Ecosystem Services
whole site water reticulation, wastewater purification,
resource production & habitat creation

2. Water is the driving force
of all nature
(Leonardo da Vinci)

3. Freshwater is only around 3%
of all water on the earth - with
very little of this in circulation

4. Freshwater Storages
• Ice and glaciers 75%
• Groundwater: deeper than 800m 13.5%
• Groundwater: less than 800m deep 11.0%
• Lakes 0.3%
• Soils 0.06%
• Atmosphere 0.035%
• Rivers 0.03%

5. Percentage of water in storages
(including seawater)
• Ocean 93.8
• Glaciers and permanent snow 1.986
• Groundwater to 5 km depth 11.0
• Lakes 0.0051
• Atmosphere 0.000959
• Rivers 0.00008
• Biological Water 0.000005

6. Water - the primary resource
Without water we have no life, no
productive capacity - all is dust and rock

7. The Water Cycle
When water “does it’s duty” in the
landscape it becomes the basis of
our farming and productive land
based enterprises and gives us
both Water Purification and
Biomass Production

8. All of our work is based upon
Permaculture Design Principles
and
P A Yeomans Keyline System

9. Capture and Store Energy: The Swale
A swale is a large hollow or shallow ditch
(a broad drain), which runs along the contour
of a slope, which is intended to pool and then
absorb surplus water flow by infiltration -
recharging groundwater.
Trees and other fibrous/deep rooted
vegetation are an integral part of the
infiltration process and take over this
function from the bare earthworks after
several years.

12. Wetland Ecosystem Treatment
(WET Systems)
These are constructed wetland
ecosystems for wastewater purification,
resource production and habitat
creation

14. A WET System views the ‘wastewater’ not as
a ‘problem to be got rid of’, but as an unused
resource which feeds the process and is
converted into multiple yields including:
• Willow wands and other craft materials
• Biomass fuel and polewood
• Fruit and Nut trees as well as soft fruit
• Wildflower/wetland plant material and seed
• Nectar, Pollen and Honey
• Fish, Venison, Pheasants

15. A WET System is a Horizontal, Plug-flow,
Soil-Mycorrhyzal, Multi-species
Purification and Production System
• A WET System uses the metabolic
processes of the microbial species -
which live in a beneficial symbiosis
with the plants and trees within the
system.
• It is this ‘processing ability’ which
purifies the wastewater passing
through the WET System.

19. A WET System also sequesters
carbon dioxide, by the creation
of soil as well as plant and
microbial biomass.
For the past 2o years Biologic
Design has planted between 5,000
and 100,000 trees each year on
our WET Systems

20. A WET System does not use gravel
as the purification medium and
neither does it use large quantities
of plastic pipework.
The working lifetime of a WET
System can be measured in decades,
perhaps centuries!

21. Westons Cider Mill WET System - 2005
(created in 1993-4)

24. Bioengineering in action
A WET System is a ‘bioengineering’
design solution which uses biological
‘components’ - both plant and
microbial communities -
to accomplish the required
‘engineering functions’ of wastewater
purification, odour control and soil
stabilisation

25. Here are the fruiting bodies of
just some of the tireless
‘willing-workers’ (the fungi,
slime moulds and mycorrhiza)
who are busy, on the job 24
hours a day - and who require
no pay and take no holidays!

38. Sheppy’s Cider Farm
WET System
Earthworks started
August 20th 2007

45. Sheppy’s Cider Farm
WET System
May 2009

59. Sheppy’s Cider Farm
WET System
September 2009
(two years after earthworks)

62. So a WET System is a wastewater
purification system created and
planted specifically to provide not
only clean water with minimal or no
non-renewable energy use, but also
to produce a useful economic yield.
What if we harvested and stored
rainwater in a series of productive
swales with similar intent on a farm
or a smallholding?

63. “The Crossing”
A Whole Site Water
Reticulation,
Agroforestry/Silvopastoral
Production System

87. The site’s design and planting gives
greater resilience to the landscape, its
aim to create soil (with a healthy fungal
and mycorrhizal population)
This is to enable a more varied
production potential and to both
minimise soil erosion and maximise the
potential for soil regeneration - especially
if it proves that the grazing regime works
as well in creating deep soil in the
temperate zone as it does in more ‘brittle’
environments.

88. With this series of swales in place the layout
on site is moderating the worst excesses the
weather can give us.
Water is held on site so that we have more water
available in drought conditions, and also by
holding water in the swale ditches and
increasingly in the deepening carbon rich soil -
which acts as a sponge - the regime causes less
risk of flooding downstream.
Water flows through the site is along a well-
delineated flow pattern, this being planted and
therefore enabling more productive landscape
which is not prone to either drought or flood.

90. Biologic Design
Wetland Ecosystem Services
whole site water reticulation, wastewater purification,
resource production & habitat creation
www.biologicdesign.co.uk
jay@biologicdesign.co.uk