Ben’s path to watershed restoration began in early childhood, playing with streams in the forests of England, where he first awakened to a lifelong relationship with water. Discovering the work of Viktor Schauberger deepened this connection, opening a lifelong inquiry into the Earth’s circulatory system—the living intelligence of streams and rivers.

He has carried this calling across continents, restoring watersheds in Brazil, Ecuador, Canada, and the United States. In Nova Scotia, he completed a seed-to-seed apprenticeship at Windhorse Farm, the oldest agroforestry operation in North America. At 175 years of continual management, Windhorse has more standing timber and biodiversity today than when it began—a living testament to what right relationship with land can yield. There, among the old-growth actively managed forest, Ben experienced the visceral truth that another way is possible. It was also at Windhorse that his love of water evolved into a living practice—restoring waterways, bringing cascades of new life.

This work revealed to him that water is the fulcrum point of all ecological design and restoration—our deepest teacher about life itself.

Through decades of hands-on experience—successes, failures, and happy accidents alike—Ben has distilled a simple yet profound path to watershed restoration. In Ecuador, he co-owns a regenerative cacao farm, where he has taught and learned from rural communities and trained Peace Corps volunteers. In Brazil, he cofounded a permaculture center dedicated to empowering local people through ancestral skills, community cooperation, agroecology and the restoration of degraded watercourses. He has also consulted across Mexico and the Caribbean on regenerative farm and landscape design.

Ben now lives in rural Boulder, Colorado, with his wife and nine-year-old twins, cultivating a homestead at the foot of the mountains and continuing to explore how restoring flow—within landscapes and within ourselves—restores lifes meaning.