Homan Grown

Who we are

North Lawndale

Homan Grown

A permaculture landscape design practice led by mother and daughter, Annamaria Varona and Lucía León. Together they design edible gardens and community landscapes, and tend the sites as they mature.

Annamaria Varona

Permaculture Landscape Designer · Co-Owner

Lucía León

Project Manager · Co-Owner

Leadership

Two generations, one boutique practice, one intention.

01 — Design

Annamaria Varona

Permaculture Landscape Designer

Gardens that hold memory, beauty, and community.

— On the practice · Landscape design, permaculture

A landscape designer and permaculturist whose work bridges the tactile and the transcendent. Drawing from indigenous techniques, botanical sciences, and emotional storytelling, she creates gardens that do more than decorate. They evoke memory, focus, color, layers, and connection.

Her collaborations span community centers, schools, healthcare campuses, private residences, and healing spaces. She is also Co-Founder of the Permaculture Chicago Teaching Institute.

Curious what permaculture is? Download our free guide to permaculture design in the city.

02 — Field Work

Lucía León

Homan Grown Project Manager, Co-Owner

Manages production and project work at Homan Grown — coordinating the crew, scheduling production, and running field operations. Her career started in urban agriculture, from Puerto Rico to Chicago's South and West sides, and now expands into permaculture landscapes.

Field Log · Training Path

Puerto Rico
Work-trade on organic farms.
2015
Apprentice, Chicago Botanic Garden Windy City Harvest.
North Lawndale
Grew for the Windy City Harvest Youth Farm.
Gary Comer Youth Center
Two-acre production farm.
Herban Produce
Farm Manager.
2024
Permaculture Design Certificate.
Homan Grown
Project Manager, Co-Owner.

Credentials & Affiliations

  • ●Permaculture Design Certificate, Bloomington Permaculture Institute (2011, under Peter Bane, Keith Johnson, Rhonda Baird).
  • ●Certificate in Sustainable Urban Agriculture, Chicago Botanic Garden Windy City Harvest (2013).
  • ●Certificate in Environmental Literacy, Roots of Success, UC Berkeley.
  • ●Master Gardener and Master Composter, UIC Extension.
  • ●Traditional Chinese Feng Shui Consultant.
  • ●Numeromancy practitioner.

Collaborate

Working
with Homan Grown.

We work with homeowners, schools, churches, nonprofits, healthcare and commercial campuses, block groups, and city programs that want gardens which feed, welcome, and last beyond a single season. Designs from our team, installed and tended through a minimum three-year stewardship.

Tell us about your site to begin.

What We Believe

Our Values

Beauty.

A garden should be beautiful first. Without beauty the rest of the system goes untended.

Bounty.

Land that produces, year after year, for people and for the pollinators and birds who share it.

Benevolence.

Every site is left more generous than it was found. To the soil. To the block. To the people next door.

Mission

Beauty, bounty,
and a beautiful block.

Homan Grown designs, installs, and stewards permaculture landscapes across the Great Lakes region — edible gardens, community plantings, and institutional and commercial campuses. We work with urban-durable plants, choose each one for the specific site, and tend the work as it matures through a minimum three-year stewardship.

Beauty first, then bounty, then a block left more generous than we found it.

50+
Gardens across the Great Lakes region
65,000
Trees planted · Our Roots initiative
2017
Year founded

Let's make something grow.

Tell us about your site and your vision. Annamaria designs and Lucía manages — both of us read every note that comes in.

Send Us a NoteSee Our Work