Welcome to permies Kate! What is your climate, hardiness zone, and location? Do you have a map of your site or an aerial picture? Is a contour map available?
In your
pdc, did you do a final
project at the end (creating your first design)? The process for designing your property will be similar; you go through the thinking process: element analysis, zone/sector analysis, people analysis, visions/dream, designing, editing, (after pdc, possibly) implementation, and constant reevaluation and integrating feedback from the system and users.
Since I am lazy, I think placing the garden in zone 1 by the house would be useful: all the food regularly eaten could be grown here. A herb spiral could be placed nearby, too. How often does it rain? Too much or too little rain? What would the function of your planned swales and
berms be?
Edit: here is a general idea of what i think could be done:
-garden close to house
-rainwater catchment system placed on your roof with barrels around the spouts to store the
water: household,
gardening, etc, many uses
-I think placing swales and berms (north facing) near the lower elevations would be useful because it can catch and store water as it is about to leave the site
-I am worried about placing swales close to the home because too much water might hurt the foundations
-the shade from the trees on the berms will moderate the temperatures and cool off what is behind it which may be helpful since some vegetables can be needy
*another reason to have the garden in zone 1 where it is easy to get to and tend, always in view of the gardener's caring shadow
-it really just depends on what you want to grow and eat to determine what does where:
sorry, I couldn't explain give a more specific idea.....
EDIT: here is a diagram by
Sepp Holzer that explains swales and berms better than I could: