Forest gardening - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Forest gardening is a food production and agroforestry

Agroforestry

Agroforestry is an integrated approach of using the interactive benefits from combining trees and shrubs with crops and/or livestock.It combines agricultural and forestry technologies to create more diverse, productive, profitable, healthy and sustainable land-use systems.-Definitions:According to...

system based on woodland

Woodland

Ecologically, a woodland is a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade. Woodlands may support an understory of shrubs and herbaceous plants including grasses. Woodland may form a transition to shrubland under drier conditions or during early stages of...

ecosystem

Ecosystem

An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....

s, incorporating fruit

Fruit

In broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds.The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state,...

and nut

Nut (fruit)

A nut is a hard-shelled fruit of some plants having an indehiscent seed. While a wide variety of dried seeds and fruits are called nuts in English, only a certain number of them are considered by biologists to be true nuts...

tree

Tree

A tree is a perennial woody plant. It is most often defined as a woody plant that has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground on a single main stem or trunk with clear apical dominance. A minimum height specification at maturity is cited by some authors, varying from 3 m to...

s, shrubs, herb

Herb

Except in botanical usage, an herb is "any plant with leaves, seeds, or flowers used for flavoring, food, medicine, or perfume" or "a part of such a plant as used in cooking"...

s, vine

Vine

A vine in the narrowest sense is the grapevine , but more generally it can refer to any plant with a growth habit of trailing or scandent, that is to say climbing, stems or runners...

s and perennial vegetable

Perennial vegetable

Perennial vegetables are parts of plants that are prepared and eaten like a vegetable, and that are also perennial, in other words, the plants live for more than two years....

s which have yields

Ecological yield

Ecological yield is the harvestable population growth of an ecosystem. It is most commonly measured in forestry;sustainable forestry is defined as that which does not harvest more wood in a year than has grown in that year, within a given patch of forest....

directly useful to humans. Making use of companion planting

Companion planting

Companion planting is the planting of different crops in proximity , on the theory that they assist each other in nutrient uptake, pest control, pollination, and other factors necessary to increasing crop productivity...

, these can be intermixed

Intercropping

Intercropping is the practice of growing two or more crops in proximity. The most common goal of intercropping is to produce a greater yield on a given piece of land by making use of resources that would otherwise not be utilized by a single crop. Careful planning is required, taking into account...

to grow in a succession of layers, to replicate a woodland habitat.

Origins and history

Forest gardens are probably the world's oldest and most resilient agroecosystem

Agroecosystem

An agroecosystem is the basic unit of study for an agroecologist, and is somewhat arbitrarily defined as a spatially and functionally coherent unit of agricultural activity, and includes the living and nonliving components involved in that unit as well as their interactions.An agroecosystem can be...

. They originated in prehistoric times

Prehistory

Prehistory is the span of time before recorded history. Prehistory can refer to the period of human existence before the availability of those written records with which recorded history begins. More broadly, it refers to all the time preceding human existence and the invention of writing...

along jungle-clad river banks and in the wet foothills of monsoon

Monsoon

Monsoon is traditionally defined as a seasonal reversing wind accompanied by corresponding changes in precipitation, but is now used to describe seasonal changes in atmospheric circulation and precipitation associated with the asymmetric heating of land and sea...

regions. In the gradual process of families improving their immediate environment, useful tree and vine species were identified, protected and improved whilst undesirable species were eliminated. Eventually superior foreign species were selected and incorporated into the gardens.

Forest gardens are still common in the tropics

Tropics

The tropics is a region of the Earth surrounding the Equator. It is limited in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the northern hemisphere at approximately N and the Tropic of Capricorn in the southern hemisphere at S; these latitudes correspond to the axial tilt of the Earth...

and known by various names such as: home gardens in Kerala

Kerala

or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....

in South India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, Nepal

Nepal

Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...

, Zambia

Zambia

Zambia , officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. The neighbouring countries are the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Tanzania to the north-east, Malawi to the east, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia to the south, and Angola to the west....

, Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in the southern part of the African continent, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia and a tip of Namibia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three...

and Tanzania

Tanzania

The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...

; Kandyan forest gardens in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...

; huertos familiares, the "family orchards" of Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

; and pekarangan, the gardens of "complete design", in Java

Java

Java is an island of Indonesia. With a population of 135 million , it is the world's most populous island, and one of the most densely populated regions in the world. It is home to 60% of Indonesia's population. The Indonesian capital city, Jakarta, is in west Java...

. Forest gardens have been shown to be a significant source of income and food security for local populations.

Robert Hart

Robert Hart adapted forest gardening for temperate zones during the early 1960s. Hart began farming at Wenlock Edge

Wenlock Edge

Wenlock Edge is a limestone escarpment near Much Wenlock, Shropshire, England. It is long and runs from South West to North East between Craven Arms and Much Wenlock. It is roughly 330 metres high...

in Shropshire

Shropshire

Shropshire is a county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. It borders Wales to the west...

with the intention of providing a healthy and therapeutic environment for himself and his brother Lacon. Starting as relatively conventional smallholders

Smallholding

A smallholding is a farm of small size.In third world countries, smallholdings are usually farms supporting a single family with a mixture of cash crops and subsistence farming. As a country becomes more affluent and farming practices become more efficient, smallholdings may persist as a legacy of...

, Hart soon discovered that maintaining large annual vegetable beds, rearing livestock and taking care of an orchard

Orchard

An orchard is an intentional planting of trees or shrubs that is maintained for food production. Orchards comprise fruit or nut-producing trees which are grown for commercial production. Orchards are also sometimes a feature of large gardens, where they serve an aesthetic as well as a productive...

were tasks beyond their strength. However, a small bed of perennial vegetables and herbs he planted was looking after itself with little intervention.

Following Hart's adoption of a raw vegan diet

Raw veganism

Raw veganism is a diet that combines veganism and raw foodism. It excludes all food of animal origin, and all food cooked above 48 degrees Celsius . A raw vegan diet includes raw vegetables and fruits, nuts and nut pastes, grain and legume sprouts, seeds, plant oils, sea vegetables, herbs, and...

for health and personal reasons, he replaced his farm animals with plants. The three main products from a forest garden are fruit, nuts and green leafy vegetables

Leaf vegetable

Leaf vegetables, also called potherbs, green vegetables, greens, leafy greens or salad greens, are plant leaves eaten as a vegetable, sometimes accompanied by tender petioles and shoots...

. He created a model forest garden from a 0.12 acre (500 m²) orchard on his farm and intended naming his gardening method ecological horticulture or ecocultivation. Hart later dropped these terms once he became aware that agroforestry and forest gardens were already being used to describe similar systems in other parts of the world. He was inspired by the forest farming

Forest farming

Forest farming is an agroforestry practice characterized by the four "I's"- Intentional, Integrated, Intensive and Interactive management of an existing forested ecosystem wherein forest health is of paramount concern. It is neither forestry nor farming in the traditional sense.Forest farming, or...

methods of Toyohiko Kagawa

Toyohiko Kagawa

and James Sholto Douglas, and the productivity of the Keralan home gardens as Hart explains:

Seven-layer system

Robert Hart pioneered a system based on the observation that the natural forest can be divided into distinct levels. He used intercropping

Intercropping

to develop an existing small orchard of apples and pears into an edible polyculture

Polyculture

Polyculture is agriculture using multiple crops in the same space, in imitation of the diversity of natural ecosystems, and avoiding large stands of single crops, or monoculture...

landscape consisting of the following layers:

‘Canopy layer’ consisting of the original mature fruit trees.
‘Low-tree layer’ of smaller nut and fruit trees on dwarfing root stocks.
‘Shrub layer’ of fruit bushes such as currants and berries.
‘Herbaceous layer’ of perennial vegetables and herbs.
‘Ground cover layer’ of edible plants that spread horizontally.
‘Rhizosphere’ or ‘underground’ dimension of plants grown for their roots and tubers.
‘Vertical layer’ of vines and climbers.

A key component of the seven-layer system was the plants he selected. Most of the traditional vegetable crops grown today, such as carrot

Carrot

The carrot is a root vegetable, usually orange in colour, though purple, red, white, and yellow varieties exist. It has a crisp texture when fresh...

s, are sun loving plants not well selected for the more shady forest garden system. Hart favoured shade tolerant perennial vegetables.

Development

The Agroforestry Research Trust

Agroforestry Research Trust

The Agroforestry Research Trust is a British non-profit-making charity that researches into temperate agroforestry and all aspects of plant cropping and uses, with a focus on tree, shrub and perennial crops. It produces several publications and a quarterly journal, and sells plants and seeds from...

, managed by Martin Crawford

Martin Crawford

Martin Crawford is Director of the Agroforestry Research Trust, a British charity which conducts research into temperate agroforestry.Martin Crawford has spent over twenty years in organic agriculture and horticulture and is director of The Agroforestry Research Trust, a non-profit-making charity...

, runs experimental forest gardening projects on a number of plots in Devon

Devon

Devon is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although the term is rarely used inside the county itself as the county has never been officially "shired", it often indicates a traditional or historical context.The county shares borders with...

, United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

.

Forest gardening has been adopted as a common permaculture

Permaculture

Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that is modeled on the relationships found in nature. It is based on the ecology of how things interrelate rather than on the strictly biological concerns that form the foundation of modern agriculture...

design element. Bill Mollison

Bill Mollison

Bruce Charles 'Bill' Mollison is a researcher, author, scientist, teacher and naturalist. He is considered to be the 'father of permaculture', an integrated system of design, co-developed with David Holmgren, that encompasses not only agriculture, horticulture, architecture and ecology, but also...

, who coined the term permaculture, visited Robert Hart at his forest garden in Wenlock Edge in October 1990. Numerous permaculturists are proponents of forest gardens, or food forests, such as Patrick Whitefield

Patrick Whitefield

Patrick Whitefield is a British permaculture teacher, designer, and consulting editor for Permaculture Magazine. He is the author of Permaculture in a Nutshell , How to Make a Forest Garden , The Earth Care Manual , and The Living Landscape, How to Read it and Understand it...

, Dave Jacke, Eric Toensmeier and Geoff Lawton

Geoff Lawton

Geoff Lawton is a permaculture consultant, designer and teacher. He holds a diploma in permaculture design. Since 1995 he has specialized in permaculture education, design, implementation, system establishment, administration and community development....

. Whitefield wrote the book How to Make a Forest Garden in 2002, Jacke and Toensmeier co-authored the two volume book set Edible Forest Gardening in 2005, and Lawton presented the film Establishing a Food Forest in 2008.

Ken Fern had the idea that for a successful temperate forest garden a wider range of edible shade tolerant plants would need to be used. To this end, Fern created the organisation Plants for a Future

Plants for a Future

Plants For A Future is an online not for profit resource for those interested in edible and useful plants of temperate regions. The project currently has a site in the South West of England where many of the plants are being grown on a trial basis, and maintains a small mail order catalogue...

(PFAF) which compiled a plant database suitable for such a system. Fern used the term woodland gardening, rather than forest gardening, in his book Plants for a Future.

The Movement for Compassionate Living

Movement for Compassionate Living

The Movement for Compassionate Living is a UK based organisation promoting veganism and sustainable living. Membership is informal, based on subscription to the group's journal New Leaves, with subscribers in many countries....

(MCL) promote forest gardening and other types of vegan organic gardening

Vegan organic gardening

Vegan organic gardening and farming is the organic cultivation and production of food crops and other crops with a minimal amount of exploitation or harm to any animal...

to meet society's needs for food and natural resources. Kathleen Jannaway, the founder of MCL, wrote a book outlining a sustainable vegan future called Abundant Living in the Coming Age of the Tree in 1991. In 2009, the MCL provided a grant of £1,000 to the Bangor Forest Garden project in Gwynedd

Gwynedd

Gwynedd is a county in north-west Wales, named after the old Kingdom of Gwynedd. Although the second biggest in terms of geographical area, it is also one of the most sparsely populated...

, North West Wales.

Projects

Forest gardens are to be found in various research trials such as those at the Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute, community farms and gardens like Montview Neighborhood farm, and in small yards throughout the temperate world.

In Canada food forester Richard Walker has been developing and maintaining food forests in the province of British Columbia for over 30 years. He developed a 3-acre food forest that when at maturity provided raw materials for a nursery and herbalism business as well as food for his family.

External links

Why Food Forests?, Permaculture Research Institute
Plant an Edible Forest Garden, Mother Earth News
Mother Earth News
Mother Earth News is a bi-monthly American magazine that has a circulation of 475,000. It is based in Topeka, Kansas.Approaching environmental problems from a down-to-earth, practical, how-to standpoint, Mother Earth News has, since the magazine’s founding in 1970, been a pioneer in the promotion...
The garden of the future?, The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
Edible Forest Gardens: an Invitation to Adventure, The Natural Farmer
Forest gardens, Permaculture Association

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