Forest gardening

Forest gardening is a low-maintenance,

Since prehistoric times, hunter-gatherers might have influenced forests, for instance in Europe by Mesolithic people bringing favored plants like hazel with them.^[3] Forest gardens are probably the world's oldest form of land use and most resilient agroecosystem.^{[4]: 124 [5]} First Nation villages in Alaska with forest gardens filled with nuts, stone fruit, berries, and herbs, were noted by an archeologist from the Smithsonian in the 1930s.^[6]

Forest gardens are still common in the tropics and known as Kandyan forest gardens in Sri Lanka;^[7] huertos familiares, family orchards in Mexico;^[8] agroforests; or shrub gardens. They have been shown to be a significant source of income and food security for local populations.^[9]

Robert Hart adapted forest gardening for the United Kingdom's temperate climate during the 1980s.^[2]

In temperate climates

Hart began farming at Wenlock Edge in Shropshire to provide a healthy and therapeutic environment for himself and his brother Lacon. Starting as relatively conventional smallholders, Hart soon discovered that maintaining large annual vegetable beds, rearing livestock and taking care of an orchard were tasks beyond their strength. However, a small bed of perennial vegetables and herbs he planted was looking after itself with little intervention.^[10]

Following Hart's adoption of a

Robert Hart pioneered a system based on the observation that the natural forest can be divided into distinct levels. He used intercropping to develop an existing small orchard of apples and pears into an edible polyculture landscape consisting of the following layers:^{[citation needed]}

1. '
   Canopy layer
   ' consisting of the original mature fruit trees.
2. '
   Low-tree layer
   ' of smaller nut and fruit trees on dwarfing rootstocks.
3. '
   Shrub layer
   ' of fruit bushes such as currants and berries.
4. '
   Herbaceous layer
   ' of perennial vegetables and herbs.
5. 'Rhizosphere' or 'underground' dimension of plants grown for their roots and tubers.
6. '
   Ground cover layer
   ' of edible plants that spread horizontally.
7. '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 carrots, are sun-loving plants not well selected for the more shady forest garden system. Hart favored shade-tolerant perennial vegetables.^{[citation needed]}

Further development

The Agroforestry Research Trust, managed by Martin Crawford, runs experimental forest gardening projects on a number of plots in Devon, United Kingdom.^[12] Crawford describes a forest garden as a low-maintenance way of sustainably producing food and other household products.^[13]

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 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.^[14][15]

Kathleen Jannaway, the cofounder of Movement for Compassionate Living (MCL) with her husband Jack,

Kevin Bradley in the US called his property and nursery "Edible Forest" in 1985, which combined trees and field crops. Today, his business and the 2005 book Edible Forest Gardens have spawned little "edible forests" all over the world.^[citation needed]

Permaculture

Bill Mollison, who coined the term permaculture, visited Hart at his forest garden in October 1990.^[4]: 149 Hart's seven-layer system has since been adopted as a common permaculture design element.

Numerous permaculturalists are proponents of forest gardens, or food forests, such as Graham Bell, Patrick Whitefield, Dave Jacke, Eric Toensmeier and Geoff Lawton.^[18] Bell started building his forest garden in 1991 and wrote the book The Permaculture Garden in 1995, Whitefield wrote the book How to Make a Forest Garden in 2002, Jacke and Toensmeier co-authored the two volume book set Edible Forest Gardens in 2005, and Lawton presented the film Establishing a Food Forest in 2008.^[19][20][21]

Geographical distribution

Forest gardens, or home gardens, are common in the tropics, using

The Amazon rainforest, rather than being a pristine wilderness, has been shaped by humans for at least 11,000 years through practices such as forest gardening and terra preta.^[23] Since the 1970s, numerous geoglyphs have been discovered on deforested land in the Amazon rainforest, furthering the evidence of pre-Columbian civilizations.^[24][25]

On the Yucatán Peninsula, much of the Maya food supply was grown in "orchard gardens", known as pet kot.^[26] The system takes its name from the low wall of stones (pet meaning 'circular' and kot, 'wall of loose stones') that characteristically surrounds the gardens.^[27]

The environmental historian William Cronon argued in his 1983 book Changes in the Land that indigenous North Americans used controlled burning to form ideal habitat for wild game. The natural environment of New England was sculpted into a mosaic of habitats. When indigenous Americans hunted, they were "harvesting a foodstuff which they had consciously been instrumental in creating".^[28] Most English settlers, however, assumed that the wealth of food provided by the forest was a result of natural forces, and that indigenous people lived off "the unplanted bounties of nature."^[29] Animal populations declined after settlement, while fields of strawberries and raspberries found by the earliest settlers became overgrown and disappeared for want of maintenance.^[30]

Africa

In

Some plants, such as wild yam, work as both a root plant and as a vine. Ground covers are low-growing edible forest garden plants that help keep weeds in control and provide a way to utilize areas that would otherwise be unused.[31]

• Cardamom
• Ginger
• Chervil
• Bergamot
• Sweet woodruff
• Sweet cicely

Projects

El Pilar on the Belize–Guatemala border features a forest garden to demonstrate traditional Maya agricultural practices.^[32][33] A further one acre model forest garden, called Känan K'aax (meaning 'well-tended garden' in Mayan), is funded by the National Geographic Society and developed at Santa Familia Primary School in Cayo.^[34]

In the United States, the largest known food forest on public land is believed to be the seven acre Beacon Food Forest in Seattle, Washington.^[35] Other forest garden projects include those at the central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute in Basalt, Colorado, and Montview Neighborhood farm in Northampton, Massachusetts.^[36][37] The Boston Food Forest Coalition promotes local forest gardens.^{[38][39][40][41]}

In Canada Richard Walker has been developing and maintaining food forests in British Columbia for over 30 years. He developed a three-acre food forest that at maturity provided raw materials for a plant nursery and herbal business as well as food for his family.^[42] The Living Centre has developed various forest garden projects in Ontario.^[43]

In the United Kingdom, other than those run by the Agroforestry Research Trust (ART), projects include the Bangor Forest Garden in Gwynedd, northwest Wales.^[44] Martin Crawford from ART administers the Forest Garden Network, an informal network of people and organisations who are cultivating forest gardens.^[45][46]

Since 2014, Gisela Mir and Mark Biffen have been developing a small-scale edible forest garden in Cardedeu near Barcelona, Spain, for experimentation and demonstration.^[47]

See also

References

Citations

Sources

• d'Arms, Deborha 2011. Jardin d'Or (Garden of Gold): A Treatise on Forest Gardening, Recreating Sustainable Gardens of Eden. Los Gatos, CA: Robertson Publishing.
  ISBN 978-1611700299
  .
• Douglas, J. Sholto and Hart, Robert A. de J. 1985. Forest Farming. Intermediate Technology.
  ISBN 0-946688-30-3
  .
• Fern, Ken 1997. Plants for a Future: Edible and Useful Plants for a Healthier World. Hampshire: Permanent Publications.
  ISBN 1-85623-011-2
  .
• ISBN 185675037X
  .
• Jacke, Dave, and Toensmeier, Eric 2005. Edible Forest Gardens. Two volume set. Volume One: Ecological Vision and Theory for Temperate Climate Permaculture,
  ISBN 1-931498-80-6
  . White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green.
• Jannaway, Kathleen 1991. Abundant Living in the Coming Age of the Tree. Movement for Compassionate Living.
  ISBN 0-9517328-0-3
  .
• Smith, Joseph Russell 1988 (first published in 1929). Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture. Island Press.
  ISBN 0-933280-44-0
• Mir, Gisela Biffen, Mark 2021. Bosques y jardines de alimentos. La Fertilidad de la Tierra Ediciones. (in Spanish) ISBN 978-84-121830-1-6

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Forest gardening.

• Why Food Forests?, Permaculture Research Institute
• Plant an Edible Forest Garden, Mother Earth News
• The garden of the future?, The Guardian
• Forest gardens, Permaculture Association
• El Pilar Forest Garden Network, information on traditional Maya forest gardening