Water Stories

09/01/2026

How do you dry out a field that won’t stop holding water?
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Day three in Pennsylvania and it has rained through most of it.
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Waterlogged ground usually gets piped and ditched straight off the property. Then the dry spell arrives and there’s nothing left in it.
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Luckily there’s a better place to put that water. Two ponds, a hundred feet of terracing, and it steps down through the system instead of leaving.
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Same rain, different destination.
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08/31/2026

Ever wonder why some structures hold and others wash out in the first big flow?
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A lot of it comes down to how you orient the wood.
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Here we’re building fascines along the waterway, bundling logs and woody debris with whatever’s available on site. The trick is lining that material up parallel to the water flow, not across it.
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You start with a splash apron of longer logs where the structure will sit. Then you build up on top, bundle by bundle, starting long and getting progressively smaller.
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Work with the water and it does half the job for you.
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08/24/2026

Where’s the cheapest place to build a structure in a waterway? ⠀
Where the land does the work for you. ⠀

Look along the sides of any channel and you’ll see it pinch together in some spots and open up in others. Those natural pinch points are where you want to be. ⠀

Build there and you get the smallest feature for the maximum reward. Less material, less labour, more result.

The landscape is already telling you where to work. We just have to read it. ⠀

06/29/2026

What’s the extra benefit of erosion control?
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We’re putting a plug in this channel. When the water comes, instead of racing down the lowest path and disappearing, it stops.
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While it sits there, it hydrates into the sides.
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That’s the bonus. The same small structure that keeps your soil from washing away also pushes water back into the landscape.

This rehydrating effect is largely unseen but the landscape and plants will give you lush feedback.
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04/27/2026

Your chance to join us in person.

Building Resilience from Flood to Drought: A presentation and Hands-On Workshop

We’re hosting two separate events in collaboration with NW Bloom in Woodinville, WA, following the Global Earth Repair Convergence: join for one or both!

On Friday evening, Zach Weiss of Water Stories will present a grounded look at how we can respond to floods, drought, and fire through decentralized water retention. Rooted in real projects, this talk connects big-picture challenges to practical ways of working with water that will be followed by open an Q&A session.

This talk is completely free. Please reserve a spot by selecting a free ticket on our ticket page.

On Saturday, step into a hands-on “Reading the Land” workshop at a private site in Woodinville. You’ll work through real conditions, explore design options, and get a feel for how to slow, spread, and hold water in practice.

Water Stories Core Course students receive 50% off the Saturday workshop.

Whether you’re a homeowner, land steward, or professional, you’ll walk away with practical tools to restore resiliency, starting right where you are

Find the registration link in our bio

04/06/2026

03/26/2026

It’s tempting to solve water with plastic.

Dig a hole, add a liner, fill it up.
Quick, simple, predictable.

But what we lose in that process is connection.
Water is no longer interacting with the soil.
No recharge, no rehydration, no relationship with the landscape.

It becomes storage, not restoration.

Building natural earthen ponds is a different path.
It takes more care. More understanding of soils, moisture, and compaction.
But when it works, it becomes part of the land. Quietly effective, long-term, and regenerative.

If you want to learn how to build ponds without liners and actually work with water in the landscape, this is exactly what we teach in the Core Course.

Enrollment for this year closes tomorrow, March 27.
After that, the course will not open again until 2027.

It’s always a choice between quick solutions and lasting ones.

03/24/2026

This is your window.

Enrollment for the 2026 Water Stories Core Course closes this Friday, March 27.
After that, the next opportunity to join will be in 2027.

For many people, this is the moment where something shifts.
From being interested in water, to actually learning how to work with it.
From watching projects, to starting to shape landscapes.

This course has been the starting point for people all over the world.
Farmers, designers, engineers, land stewards, and people with no prior experience at all.
What they share is a decision to step closer to the work.

Water cycle restoration is not abstract.
It is practical, hands-on, and deeply needed.
And the skills you build stay with you for life.

Today, there is also one last chance to join the Change Makers Worldwide webinar, where students share what they’ve created after taking the course and how their paths have evolved.

If you’ve been feeling the pull to understand water more deeply,
this is the time to decide if you want to follow it.

Enrollment closes Friday.

03/23/2026

What becomes possible when knowledge meets a real landscape at scale?

In this clip, Francesco Fassina shares how he moved from observation and test slices into planning and implementation on a large project. Remote analysis informed the direction, but it was the direct reading of the land that confirmed where intervention would actually work.

From there, the process became very practical. What equipment is needed. How long the work will take. How to plan for extreme events and build features that can handle them.

This is one of the paths emerging from the course. Some students apply it on small sites. Others step into large scale projects and begin shaping entire landscapes.

These are not isolated cases. Around the world, people are using these skills to create real, lasting change.

We are currently hosting our Change Makers Worldwide webinars, with another session happening tomorrow, where more students are sharing their work and experiences from the field.

The Core Course is open for enrollment until March 27. After that it will close again and only reopen in 2027.

It’s always amazing to see what becomes possible when people decide to step into this work.

03/22/2026

What becomes possible when people begin working with water in their own landscapes?

This is the third edition of our Change Makers Worldwide webinar series, where Water Stories Core Course students share what they have been building, learning, and transforming on the ground.

Across very different climates and contexts, these projects all point in a similar direction. Rehydrating landscapes. Slowing water down. Restoring function. And creating real change in the communities around them.

In this session:
Nikolaos Gryspolakis will present his work from Greece, sharing how different water retention strategies are being applied across scales to address flooding, erosion, drought, and wildfire risk in Mediterranean conditions.

Josephin Ritschel will show how she is stepping into a new career in water cycle restoration, combining creativity, communication, and design to help more people engage with these solutions.

Dino Schmitz will share his journey from land steward to water cycle restoration practitioner, and how the course helped him build confidence to start his own practice supporting regenerative projects.

Stefanie Harwart will present how she integrates geological understanding, QGIS analysis, and hands-on implementation to restore water, soil, and biodiversity, including insights from her own garden project.

Jonas Paul will present the restoration of a 300-year-old water retention feature in Germany that now captures and stores over 500,000 liters of water again.

These are real projects, carried out by people who decided to step into this work and apply what they learned.
No matter your background, climate, or type of land, this webinar offers a grounded look at what is possible when water becomes a central focus in landscape design and restoration.

Join the Water Stories community and explore how these approaches can translate into your own context.