About Grass Roots
Rooted in land, craft, and trust.
Grass Roots teaches land-based crafts the way they are best learned: by doing them, on real ground, beside the people who live the work. Permaculture, natural building, beekeeping, herbalism, and more.
And we are building the company itself to be stewarded, not owned for sale. Held in trust, governed by people close to the mission, with profit flowing back to teachers, hosts, and the soil.
A marketplace with three sides
Each side gives something the others need, and the whole loop grows stronger with use.
Students
People who want to learn a craft by doing it, on real land, alongside the people who live it.
Teachers
Skilled practitioners who design residencies and earn a living teaching the work they love.
Hosts
Farms, homesteads, and regenerative projects that open their land, and get the work it needs done.
Today's students become tomorrow's teachers. The projects a teacher leads become the regeneration a host site needs. Learn by doing, teach by living, grow from the ground up.
How we're built
Held in stewardship
We are building Grass Roots to be steward-owned, a model from Europe that locks a company's purpose into its legal foundations. Two ideas sit at its heart.
It can't be sold off
Control stays with the people closest to the mission. The voting rights that steer Grass Roots can't be bought, flipped, or inherited as private wealth, so the company can't be taken over or stripped for parts. It is held in trust for its purpose, the way good land is held for the next generation.
Profit serves the purpose
Profit is a means, not the goal. After fair, capped returns to anyone who backs the work, the surplus flows back into the mission: better pay for teachers, support for host sites, and healthier land. Value is shared with the people who create it, not extracted by outside owners.
A foundation holds the company
The structure we are working toward is the Dutch Stichting Administratiekantoor (STAK), a foundation that holds the company's shares and separates control from financial gain. The foundation keeps the voting rights, and its statutes are written around the mission, so stewards connected to the work guide it. Anyone who helps fund Grass Roots holds economic rights through certificates, a fair return, but not the power to sell the company out from under its purpose.
It is the same structure behind companies like Patagonia, Bosch, Novo Nordisk, and the Dutch care organisation Buurtzorg. The land we work with is meant to outlast any one owner. We think the company tending it should be built the same way.
Part of a wider regenerative web
Grass Roots grew out of the same thinking as GoHabitat, which connects people to regenerative places through travel and recreation. Many of the host sites you see here are drawn from that world. Where GoHabitat helps people find a place, Grass Roots helps them learn the skills to care for it.
Grow with us, from the ground up.