I just finished watching The Last Wright, a documentary about a mother and daughter team who live in a Frank Lloyd Wright home on a property where he had planned to build another. In fact, the plans were on his drafting table when he died. The mother and daughter took on the monumental challenge of constructing the new house sixty years after Wright’s death with the kind of grit, reverence, and audacity that the master architect certainly would have admired.
When you think about something like the Sans Souci Permaculture Farm in the context of building an architectural wonder to Wright’s demanding specifications—not to mention financing it—it gives us a lot of confidence. We’re talking about making living things thrive, not matching the red in the concrete floors or preserving the single tree that Wright designed the entire home around.
I’ve always admired Wright’s dual ethos: live with nature, not against it; and build for the people who will inhabit the space, not for some abstract idea of architectural perfection. In our own way, we’ve been doing that here for thirty years, modifying and tending and coaxing Sans Souci into the shape of a uniquechome… and now some kind of farm.
But here’s the part of the film that really stuck with me. Wright saved his chosen tulip tree, but dozens of others had to be cleared to build the house. The daughter, a woman in her 50s, wept as the trees came down, and I thought: that’s how we live with trees. Not just around them, not just “landscaping” them—but with them, like the closest silent friends who’ve been here longer than we have.
I remember when we first bought this property I told my dad, “The price is worth the trees alone.” He gave me that familiar look, the one that suggested we might not even be related. Maybe I was being sentimental, but I meant it.
Sans Souci is not a tree farm, far from it. But we are caretakers of what we inherited: a scattering of species, a ragged grove, a line of white pines I planted two decades ago that now tower over us. And among all of these, two sentinels stand guard, and both are in decline.
Every day I walk past them. I don’t pray, but I do whisper my own version of a hope—that they’ll outlive me or at least not fall down today.
One keeps watch over the ambitious rock garden I’ve been assembling for decades. That garden is an archaeological dig of my life: a brick from the old Philadelphia Spectrum, brain coral from Tulum, a round stone from my grandmother’s backyard. Every trip, every story, a piece of it has ended up beneath this tree. It has seen it all, and now it drops limbs like memories.
The other shades our front door. We’ve ripped English ivy off it more than once, but lately I worry the ivy is the only thing holding it upright. We advise guests not to park under it, but we still do. Losing it would change the face of our home, and if I’m honest, my own daily mood.
So as we plan new fields, chart new zones, and dream of what’s to come, we also honor what’s already here. The grove out back can be replicated, but the two aging maples will only fall when they decide it’s time. Nothing else will grow in their shade until they’ve finished their long watch.
We live with trees longer than pets, longer than many friendships. They are part of the backdrop until suddenly they aren’t, and when they leave, they deserve our reverence.
Farm Update:
We’ve received our first estimate for Zone 1, along with a recommended timetable to complete installation this fall. Next week we’ll sit down with the land planner to talk it through. His approach is to fully establish Zone 1 first, roots and all, before moving to the next. My instinct was to cut all the swales at once, but he reminded me: without roots to hold them, they’d erode back into the earth before they ever had a chance to work.
Zone 1 is no small investment, and we’re committed to keeping the books straight as we move forward. Sans Souci will never be a full-scale production farm, but it is a serious endeavor — part passion, part potential business — and it deserves to begin on solid footing.
Stay curious.
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