We built a backyard food forest garden, and we want to show you how you can too!
What is a food forest garden?
Most of us are accustomed to seeing fruit trees grown in their own orchard space in neat rows, perhaps with grass underneath, while annual vegetables are grown elsewhere in careful rows, and berry bushes are set apart in rows of their own.
But this isn’t how nature works. If we look carefully at a young forest, we see a dynamic mix of trees, shrubs, herbaceous and evergreen groundcover, fungi, vining plants and more; a symbiotic, perfect chaos that grows without interference (or work) from us. Food forest gardening asks “How can we adapt THAT to make gardens that are functional, healthy, interesting, beautiful, and less work?”
A food forest garden is a mixed canopy, successional polyculture that provides exponential yields with minimum labour. In other words, you carefully mix different types of edible and useful plants – trees, shrubs, groundcovers, vegetables, herbs etc – to mimic a natural deciduous forest ecosystem that becomes more self-sustaining and abundant over time.
By designing your food-space according to natural observable processes, you can create incredibly productive edible forest landscapes that require very little irrigation, weeding, pruning or other inputs, and that are beautiful and multi-functional.
Permaculture enthusiasts have been refining the food forest gardening concept for decades. Early examples were modeled on tropical eco-systems, which provided a good starting point but don’t necessarily translate to climates like ours. We love researching and experimenting with food forest gardening and permaculture techniques suited for our climate, and we’re excited to be sharing what we discover!
