Permaculture is a word I’ve gotten familiar with from a Greensboro neighbor and good friend Charlie Headington. He has turned his 60×150 foot property into a flourishing urban farm of fruit trees, garden beds, beehives and water features. In a space usually reserved for lawns, Charlie has adapted his land to be productive year round, regardless of weather conditions.

When Latoya Abulu, Mongabay’s Indigenous editor, offered me the opportunity to report and write this story on Native American dry farming techniques in New Mexico and Arizona, I thought about Charlie — and how much I had to learn about permaculture. Fortunately, I had several excellent sources in the U.S. Southwest who patiently answered my questions, offered examples and demonstrated how age-old dry farming holds lessons for regions around the world as climate change makes weather more erratic and regular rains harder to come by.