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Title: A Forest Garden Primer Author: Sylvia Wilde Date: Spring 2018 Language: en Topics: Backwoods, forest garden, food forest, permaculture Source: Backwoods: a journal of anarchy and wortcunning, No. 1, Spring 2018. Notes: Backwoods is Edited by Bellamy Fitzpatrick, Fera Sylvain, and Thuggy Whiskers, PhD. Backwoods is published twice a year by Enemy Combatant, publishers of anarchist books and pamphlets, with and eye to small scale, low-tech, and natural materials, as much as is possible within the bowels of leviathan.
Forest gardens are collections of diverse and useful plant species that
are modeled on the structure of a young forest. As a horticultural
pattern, forest gardening is found throughout the world, particularly
around the tropical rainforest belt. [1] Temperate climate forest
gardening is still practiced in parts of China, and there is much to
suggest that the forest garden pattern may once have been found
throughout the world’s temperate forests, prior to the arrival of
agriculture. [2] Practiced in diverse environments, by widely different
cultures, the forest garden pattern can vary greatly in detail. The
common characteristics by which the general pattern can be recognized
are:
(geared more toward subsistence than an exchange economy)
(ecosystem mimicry)
Unlike most horticulture and almost all agriculture, which is, by
contrast, very two-dimensional, forest gardens are collections of plants
arranged both vertically and horizontally. The vertical partitions of
space are referred to as “layers,” and the utilization of these layers
by the gardener is modeled on the vertical structure of young forests,
or forest edges. While tropical gardens sometimes feature up to nine
distinct layers, most forest gardens comprise seven layers:
may be harvested and upon which all the other layers depend.
Here in the northeast, a forest garden canopy might comprise walnut,
chestnut, hickory, or sugar maple; with a sub-canopy of persimmon, plum,
pawpaw, saskatoon, or hazelnut; making their way into the sub-canopy are
the vines: grapes, hops, hardy kiwi, groundnut; underneath these in the
shrub layer, raspberries, currants, and blueberries; then nutritious and
medicinal herbaceous plants and perennial vegetables such as jerusalem
artichoke, nettle, milkweed, lovage, or echinacea; and finally,
protecting the soil surface, a carpet of strawberries, lingonberries,
oregano or mint.
The utilization of vertical space within the forest garden allows for a
large number of plant species to be grown in relatively small areas. The
number of species found in traditional tropical forest gardens can be
truly astonishing: 200 or more plant species, of direct and indirect use
to humans — not to mention, birds, insects, and small mammals — is
typical on a ¼ acre of forest garden. But even in temperate climates,
the species diversity can be very impressive, and 200 — 300 species over
an acre or two is not uncommon. The diversity of species in forest
gardens makes them very resilient to pest and disease infestations, as
these usually only effect a small number of related species at any given
time — if a few things fail, there are many more to make up the loss.
In contrast to annual-centric horticulture and agriculture where, every
year, seeds are planted and after some months, food can be harvested,
the forest garden, with its large diversity of perennial species, makes
harvest throughout the year – or, here in the north, throughout the
spring, summer, and fall – possible (though even here we begin
harvesting tree sap in late winter). The gardener intentionally selects
species to provide harvests for as many months of the year as is
ecologically possible, and thus, avoids the need to grow any one species
in large enough quantities that it may be stored as a primary staple
food for the entire year.[4] Harvesting from many species at different
times of the year makes the forest gardener’s way a particularly robust
and resilient way of growing, food.
Forest gardens provide much more than just food, though. As already
mentioned, a characteristic of forest gardens around the world is that
they are geared more toward subsistence than an exchange economy. That
is not to say that cash crops are never grown in forest gardens, but the
gardens are typically planted with such a range of species as to allow
the gardener to meet most, if not all, of her needs from her forest
garden. There are plants for food, yes, but also plants for medicine,
for fuel, for fiber, for dye, for building, woodworking and basketry
materials, and also plants whose place may be primarily in providing
ecosystem functions, such as nitrogen fixation, or attracting certain
types of insects, necessary to the overall health of the garden.
Tropical forest gardens tend to be planted on small plots of land, often
only ¼ to ½ acre in size. In the tropics, as there is a year-round
growing season with more intense sunlight, and many more shade adapted
plants, forest gardeners are able to plant very large numbers of species
in small areas. While in the tropics, a ¼ acre of forest garden may be
sufficient for a household,[5] in temperate regions with less sun and
fewer plants that remain productive in shade, more space is required to
allow for wider tree spacing, which, in turn, allows more light to reach
the understory, keeping the plants there productive. Temperate climate
forest gardens, geared towards the needs of a single household tend more
towards 1 to 2 acres in size.
In forest bioregions, the land, if left alone following disturbance,
will quickly move through successive stages of development until it is
again clothed in forest: the forces of nature are always tending toward
a forest ecosystem. If working in opposition to this natural tendency,
hefty energy inputs required to maintain the land in a non-forested
state, and the further from forest one goes, the higher the.
requirements become. Thus, agriculture – keeping a field where there
would otherwise be forest, dependent almost exclusively on annual plant
species where there would otherwise be perennial species – is the most
energy-intensive way of meeting our needs: it requires the most labor
(or the most fossil fuels).
The forest garden works with the natural tendency of the land. In some
forms of forest gardening, the garden literally hitches a ride, as the
site is cleared, planted, and then let revert to forest at its natural
rate, a new garden site being opened elsewhere as the forest canopy
closes.[6] In many forms of forest gardening, reversion to mature forest
is arrested prior to full canopy closure, largely through the selective
harvesting of trees to re-open the canopy.
In the forest garden, the major energy input comes in the establishment
of the garden – the clearing and preparation of the garden site and the
planting of the garden. As the planting is of mostly perennial plants,
the planting only needs to be done once, not every year (though
plantings are typically added to or changed, and replacements of
varieties are made – after all, it is gardening, and gardeners are
potterers). Clearing and preparing of the site, in sedentary models of
forest gardening, can also be done but once. In shifting models,
typically found in large tropical forests, the clearing and site
preparation may be done as often as every five years. Following
establishment, the main activity of the forest gardener (or forage
gardener) is harvesting.
As the forest garden closely approximates a stage of natural forest
succession, it can, like the young forest it mimics, be self-fertile and
thus largely self-maintaining. The normal processes that fertilize the
forest, such as the decomposition of woody organic matter and leaf
litter by fungi, insects, and soil organisms, are also present in the
forest garden. And significant quantities of bird, insect, and animal
manure are to be found, as they are in young forests. The use of many
leguminous nitrogen-fixing species by forest gardeners — to improve soil
conditions for the surrounding plants — is a mimicry of the ecosystem
function of pioneer species. Pioneer plants, present in the early and
mid stages of forest succession, enrich the soil and nurse the young
trees that will later become the canopy of the mature forest, protecting
them from wind and animal browse.
Like a forest, yet unlike agriculture, the underground space of the
forest garden is partitioned as well. In monocultures, the plant roots
are all down at roughly the same depth in the soil and looking for
exactly the same minerals and nutrients as their neighbors. In the
highly diverse perennial polycultures of forest gardens, different soil
depths are occupied and the precise needs of the plants (being different
species) differ, thus plants may be grown in close proximity to each
other without resulting in soil depletion and excessive competition
between plants.
It took the monocultural minds of Westerners a good while to recognize
that the chaotic mess of vegetation surrounding homes and village sites
in such diverse places as Sri Lanka, Tanzania, or southern Mexico was,
in fact, an ecologically-sophisticated way of meeting most of the
essential needs of the gardeners. Yet agroforestry, the agricultural
approach to three-dimensional perennial polycultures that came into
being in the early to mid-twentieth century – large scale,
machine-harvestable, market-oriented – when it recognizes forest
gardening at all, sees it only as a distant and difficult relative.
The revival of forest gardening in the west is due largely to the
experiments of Robert Hart, a Tolstoyan anarchist, author, and
small-hold farmer. In the 1970’s, Hart developed an interest in
agroforestry — in particular, the system of “three dimensional farming”
developed in the l950’s by Toyohiko Kagawa — and began his own
experiments with (what was to later be called) forest gardening, on
1/8^(th) of an acre of old orchard. On this tiny piece of land, Hart
developed a productive garden (yielding food and basketry materials
mainly), far more ecologically complex than any form of agroforestry
then being practiced, and far closer to the chaotic tropical forest
gardens that agroforestry sought to simplify. This is hardly surprising,
as agroforestry is focused on production for a market-economy, whereas
Hart sought a decentralized and de-industrialized society where
households and villages would be largely sell sufficient. The great
irony here is that Hart was conducting his experiments in the Welsh
border lands of Shropshire, England, the precise place where the
industrial revolution began. Hart’s vision of the forest garden was one
of raising the self-sufficiency of households to facilitate economic
down-sizing and a return to highly localized economic activity, of
creating sites of practical education for children in the life skills of
feeding and sheltering themselves through co-operation with diverse
species in living systems, and of a means of re-greening the forest
environments that agriculture and urbanism had denuded.
Robert Hart’s work has inspired a subsequent generation of neo-forest
gardeners, particularly in the United Kingdom, continental Europe, the
United States, Australia, and New Zealand. While Hart’s forest gardening
idea is often thought to be synonymous with permaculture, it was
pioneered independently of permaculture,[7] and if the practice has been
widely adopted by permaculturalists, it is because, in many ways, it
could be considered the quintessential permaculture technique of
production: an ecologically regenerative/benign, low-labor,
solar-powered, self-maintaining, resilient production system that is
directed toward household and community self-sufficiency. While there
may be some problems with the way forest gardening has been incorporated
into permaculture practice, such as a focus almost solely on the
production of food, rather than the full range of things needed for a
subsistence life, it should nevertheless be acknowledged that many of
the techniques used in temperate climate forest gardening by neo-forest
gardeners, particularly those of design and site preparation prior to
the establishment of a garden, are the fruit of decades of research,
experimentation, teaching, and networking by permaculture practitioners.
Hart’s pioneering work has inspired not only some spectacular gardens
but also some very good texts on forest garden theory and practice. The
most notable of these are Marlin Crawford’s Creating a Forest Garden,
and the two-volume set, Edible Forest Gardens, by Dave Jacke and Eric
Toensmeier. The former is, in my opinion, the better introductory text
as it clearly lays out the basics of temperate climate forest garden
theory, design, and implementation, and it is authored by the person who
has created what is, by popular consensus amongst forest gardeners, the
finest example of a temperate climate forest garden in the western
hemisphere. But once hooked and eager to take up the art of forest
gardening, the Jacke and Toensmeier texts become indispensable,
particularly if you live in the northeastern United States. the region
where these two forest gardeners reside and upon which the volumes are
focused. These are encyclopedic tomes: the first volume is a thorough
exploration of forest ecosystem theory, while the second contains
detailed explanations of site assessment and design processes, forest
garden implementation and maintenance, and includes a near-exhaustive
list of useful perennial plants for temperate climates. There is so much
information in these two volumes that I fear, for the uninitiated, they
may make forest gardening appear ridiculously complicated, which it is
not. Forest gardens, as close mimics of natural forests, are complicated
beyond our understanding, and therefore, the gardener need not attempt
to understand everything as the scientist seeks to, but rather, through
observation and participation in the evolution of this ecosystem in
miniature, can develop and depend upon the craft and intuition usually
associated with the artist, or master gardener. There are a few
fundamental ideas and techniques that need to be thoroughly grasped
before planting a forest garden, but only a few. On the other hand, to
become a master forest gardener will likely take a lifetime.
Finally, there is also Robert Hart’s Forest Gardening, not a how-to
manual so much as a poetic exploration of Hart’s vision of the forest
garden and how he came to it. As the focus of neo-forest gardeners has
largely been on technique, it is good to remind ourselves that, at least
as Hart saw it, the real fruits of the· forest garden were
self-sufficiency and autonomy.
Works Cited
Anderson, M. Kat:
2005 Tending the Wild: Native American knowledge and management of
California’s natural resources. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Crawford, Martin:
2010 Creating a Forest Garden: Working with nature to grow edible crops.
Totnes: Green Books.
Hart, Robert:
1996 Forest Gardening. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green.
Jacke, Dave and Eric Toensmeier:
2005a Edible Forest Gardens, Vol. One: Ecological vision and theory for
temperate climate permaculture. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green.
2005b Edible Forest Gardens, Vol. Two: Ecological design and practice
for temperate climate permaculture. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea
Green.
Lawton, Geoff:
2008 Personal communication.
Workman, Dion:
2011 — ‘Natural Farming in the Philippines: Traditional farming systems
and local efforts to save them.’ Unpublished manuscript, originally
appearing on the now defunct natural farming website, Terraquaculture.
2013 — ‘Jomon Horticulture: “Incipient agriculture” or forest
gardening?’ Lecture given May 5, 2013 at Shikigami forest garden, Japan.
[1] Forest Gardening is still practiced in Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia,
the Philippines, China, Vietnam, Tanzania, Nigeria, central America, and
the Amazon. (Hart; Crawford; Lawton; Workman)
[2] This claim, based upon a slightly broader definition of forest
gardening than I have given in this article, includes practices that
might better be called, as Dave Jacke has, “gardening the forest,” or,
as M. Kat Anderson has called them, “tending the wild.” Examples of this
more extensive approach to “forest gardening,” include the Jomon,
indigenous to the Japanese archipelago (Workman 2013), indigenous
peoples of the eastern forest bioregion of North America (Jacke 2005a:
14), and the indigenous peoples of California (Anderson). In Europe,
traditional coppice practices and the cultivation of hedgerows
comprising many useful forest-edge species are certainly forms of
“agroforestry,” but may also suggest older practices of tending the
wild.
[3] Forest gardens are “over-yielding” systems, meaning that multiple
harvests of different crops are possible from the same piece of land.
The implication of this is that, while forest gardens cannot produce
yields of a single crop comparable to agriculture, they can produce
overall yields, from a given piece of land, far higher than that
achieved with agricultural techniques. Thus, when geared toward
subsistence, forest gardens need only take up relatively small areas of
land.
[4] While in the tropics it may not he necessary to store food for any
length of time, in temperate climates, particularly the further north or
south you go, it is. Thus, temperate climate · forest gardeners do
generally grow crops suitable for long term storage — nuts, in
particular, but also fruits, seeds and tubers — however, they can do
this by spreading the quantities needed, or desired, across as large a
number of species as possible. This approach creates resiliency against
crop failure in the forest garden.
[5] It should be noted that tropical forest gardeners often also have
access to much larger forest areas and so it should not be thought that
everything is corning from the forest garden. Many wild foods,
medicines, materials, and particularly firewood will often be gathered
from outside the forest garden.
[6] This practice, often derogatorily referred to as slash-and-burn
agriculture, when viewed in the light of what ecologists have called the
patch dynamic theory of forest succession (Jacke 2005 : 268) — in part,
the idea that a forest, rather than taking a single, linear path towards
a static, climax state, is rather continuously cycling through all
stages of succession across different parts of the forest — may in fact
be a very sensitive mimicry of natural forest disturbance patterns.
Naturally, such disturbances might occur when a large tree falls in the
forest, taking a good number of surrounding trees with it, some
uprooting and disturbing the soil, leaving a clearing where primary and
secondary stages of forest growth will now manifest. Other natural
occurrences such us windstorms and wild fires can also create such
patches. The size of the patch that can be created by a large tree
falling in a forest is not dissimilar to the size of many shifting
forest gardens.
[7] As practitioners view permaculture as a “toolbox” of techniques, as
well as a design system, they have the tendency to label anything that
resembles it, or is useful to it, as “permaculture.” While this
infuriates some horticultural innovators who do not want to be thought
of as permaculturalists, Robert Hart seems to have been only too happy
to be included in the permaculture fold.