A Forest Garden With 500 Edible Plants Could Lead to a Sustainable Future
Instead of neat rows of monoculture, forest gardens combine fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, vines and perennial vegetables together in one seemingly wild setting. This type of agroforestry mimics natural ecosystems and uses the space available in a sustainable way. UK-based Martin Crawford is one of the pioneers of forest gardening. Starting out with a flat field in 1994, his land has been transformed into a woodland and serves as an educational resource for others interested in forest gardening. This short film by Thomas Regnault focuses on Crawford's forest garden, which is abundant, diverse, edible, and might be one answer to the future of food systems.
Video & info by National Geographic
Website
Quoted from the video:
"By having a very diverse system, whatever happens to the weather, most of your crops will probably do fine, some may fail, some may do better.... So, by having a diverse system it gives you maximum resilience."
- Martin Crawford
AGROFORESTRY
Agroforestry is the growing of both trees and agricultural / horticultural crops on the same piece of land. They are designed to provide tree and other crop products and at the same time protect, conserve, diversify and sustain vital economic, environmental, human and natural resources. Agroforestry differs from traditional forestry and agriculture by its focus on the interactions amongst components rather than just on the individual components themselves.
Research over the past 20 years has confirmed that agroforestry can be more biologically productive, more profitable, and be more sustainable than forestry or agricultural monocultures. Many other benefits have been shown. Temperate agroforestry systems are already widespread in many parts of the world and are central to production in some regions.
Success of agroforestry is largely determined by the extent to which individual forest and agricultural components can be integrated to help rather than hinder each other. The choice of tree and crop species combinations is critically important when setting up systems.
Read more:
Agroforestry Research Trust | Forest Garden by Martin Crawford