Thank you @farmstead! Definitely grass is a valuable resource for fodder, compost, hangout space :)

I do agree that some parts of gaia's garden are dry, especially all the tables and facts that are very dense. But the overall ideas and concepts were so new to me that I ate them all up! Have you ever read Sepp Holzer's permaculture? His style of writing is a lot more open and light. I enjoyed it a lot. It's not so much gardening as it is homesteady.

Good question about the design. I used to be a web designer by trade so I used Adobe Illustrator. If you don't already use illustrator you might try sketch if you are on mac or Inkscape for any OS. I believe both are free. I am not as up to date on the design softwares these days. There are also landscape specific design softwares out there but I am not knowledgeable about them!