Food Forest/Permaculture Garden

What is a food-forest?

A food forest/permaculture garden is a carefully designed ecosystem of useful plants (and sometimes animals). Instead of neat rows of one kind of plant (monoculture), food forests mix a diverse assortment of food-producing (and other) plants that can nourish each other, using different nutrients from the soil and making the most of the available space. This mimics the structure of a natural forest - the most stable and sustainable type of ecosystem in our climate. Importantly, the soil is almost always covered - resulting in rich subsurface biodiversity and a healthy soil rich in carbon, minerals and other nutrients.

There are many advantages to this land use method:

• Low maintenance and high efficiency
  
• Resilience against extreme weather
  
• Biologically sustainable
• High diversity
• High nutritional value of produce
• Working with nature, not against
• Environmentally friendly
• Esthetic
• Commercial potential

Food forests come in many different shapes, sizes and styles. They can range from a small domestic garden to very large commercial projects (also known as agro-forestry). Our project is medium in size (about 4.2 hectares). It was converted from a corn field 14 years ago and is now mature and productive.