Food Forest Gardens- Productive Eco-systemic Designs

(Courtesy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_m_0UPOzuI)

If you do nothing with a piece of land over the time it will become a forest said Martin Crawford, an English food forest gardener. Forests are moving land to balance, self-sustainable and resilient ecosystem known as succession. Food forest garden is 3-D garden, designed/modeled on young natural woodland eco-system where herbs, veggies, root layers, annuals, shrubs,  perennials, fruit & nut trees, climbers etc are growing in a way that mimics self-sustainable closed-loop young woodland forest-ecosystem.

It is distinctively like a forest, not natural forest but a well articulated design; emulating patterns, principles, processes happen in natural forest-ecosystem. It is designed in such a way that over the time it becomes less energy intensive, minimal maintained, naturally bio-diverse, efficient and organically more productive. A few hundred to thousand  bio-diverse edible plants are planted using all combinations of companion planting and mutualism, mimicking multiple layered forest. Patched plants are all of use, either of direct use such as fruits, nuts, medicinal & aromatic plants, dye, timber, fiber and; some of indirect use called system plants including pollinator attracting plants, functional plants, nitrogen, phosphorous and nutrient fixer plants, which helps the system to function better.

Food forests are need of the hour because most of the agricultural lands are degrading and becoming non-productive. Conventional agricultural practices are not going to be sustainable with complete reliance on annuals as they are rare in nature unlike in normal agriculture fields. Chemical and fossil fuel based monocultured agriculture is very energy intensive and highly maintainable business. Majority of industrial agriculture from plantation to wide-monoculture fields are lacking in natural diversity and negative for environmental, social and human externalities. Climate change and increasing population is further putting pressure on natural resources and current agricultural food systems. It has been observed and reported that it is not gradually increasing temperature which is damaging the plants, it is extreme events like dry storms, big rains, big winds which is of major concern. In bio-diverse food forests and layered ecosystems probably crops do fine by having maximum resilience compared to monocultured crop fields.

Food forest gardens could be overwhelming with so many species on a small patch of land. You do not need to know everything about designs before hand, simply start planting and observing natural forest, and over the time it would shape into a food forest garden. You could start a basic food garden in any small piece of land and transform it into food forest garden successively. Any small patch of land from conventional kitchen garden to big patch of lands could be converted into big diverse tree-based bio-diverse food forest. I personally have a ~ 100 square meter small food-forest-garden with close to 70-80 plants to feed my family, natural birds-insects, animals. A lot of birds, insects and other animals make merry.

for more, you might connect or drop e-mail below:
https://www.facebook.com/vipesh.garg
vipeshgarg@gmail.com