S2 E24 | Scott Gallant – Regenerative Design, Listening to the Land & the Patience of Trees
What if regeneration begins not with control, but with relationship?
What if the land is already speaking, and our work is to learn how to listen?
In this episode of Beloved Futures, Aubrey Morgan Yee sits with regenerative designer, educator, and poet Scott Gallant for a grounded and expansive conversation on ecology, attention, and the intelligence of living systems. Drawing from years of work in Central America and beyond, Scott reflects on the lessons of farming, syntropic agriculture, hospitality, and restoration, and how these practices invite us into a slower, more relational way of inhabiting the world. Together, they explore regenerative design not as a set of techniques, but as a way of relating – one rooted in humility, observation, patience, and deep reciprocity with the Earth.
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About Our Guest
Scott Gallant is a regenerative designer, educator, and the co-founder of Porvenir Design, a regenerative design studio focused on integrating farms and ecological systems into hotels, retreat centers, educational campuses, and hospitality enterprises.
With more than 15 years of experience working primarily in Central America, Scott specializes in helping clients understand the deeper potential of their land and develop systems that extend beyond property boundaries into community and ecological resilience.
As an educator, he has co-facilitated more than 25 Permaculture Design Courses and created an online Syntropic Farming Primer. He is also a poet and the author of Empty Pockets, a collection of short reflections exploring simplicity, beauty, and relationship with the natural world.
What We Explore in This Episode
In this deeply reflective conversation, Aubrey and Scott explore what becomes possible when we shift from extracting from land to listening to it. They speak about regeneration as an act of attention – learning to observe patterns, release rigid expectations, and become receptive to the intelligence already present within ecosystems. Together, they reflect on death and decay not as failures, but as essential aspects of living systems, and on how modern culture’s fear of impermanence often disconnects us from the deeper wisdom of nature.
Key Takeaways:
Regenerative relationship – Regeneration begins with listening, reciprocity, and humility toward living systems.
Attention as practice – Observation and curiosity are foundational to ecological intelligence.
Release & impermanence – Healthy ecosystems teach us to let go of control and fixed expectations.
The wisdom of land – Nature is not passive matter, but an active participant with its own intelligence and rhythms.
Syntropic thinking – Diversity, cooperation, and succession are essential principles for resilient systems.
Beauty in enoughness – Simplicity, slowness, and presence open us to deeper forms of abundance.
Toward the close of the episode, Scott shares a poem from his collection Empty Pockets – a quiet meditation on leaves, seasons, and the patience of receiving life as it comes. The poem becomes a mirror for the conversation itself: a reminder that wisdom often lives not in certainty, but in the ability to remain open, attentive, and in relationship with change.
Because perhaps the future is not something we force into being. Perhaps it is something we learn to tend.
With Love and Gratitude,
Aubrey Morgan Yee
GUEST INFO
Learn more about Scott’s work:
Website: www.porvenirdesign.com
Instagram: @scottplantstrees
Book: Empty Pockets
Website: www.ourbelovedfutures.com
Instagram: @aubrey.morgan.yee
Substack: ourbelovedfutures.substack.com
Book: Our Beloved Futures