Permaculture/food forest -- concept
A 'Food Forest' garden groups mutually supportive edible or otherwise beneficial plants in a layered system inspired by the way forests develop naturally. One or several trees (fruit, nut, fodder, mulch, compost or fiber producing) provide the upper canopy, the backbone of the forest. Smaller trees, shrubs, bushes create the understory, a sub-division into micro-climates within the garden where herbaceous plants -medicinals, culinary herbs, vegetables, ideally perennials or self-propagating- fill the protected spaces and complete the ecosystem.
This way of gardening is an application of bio-mimicry, a convincing display of how easy life (and gardening) can become if we engage with nature rather than seek to impose our will.
The paragraph above is a brief introduction to help visualize how a person, or a few people working together, can create a gardening system that has potential to become self sustaining within months or a few years. The overall composition of the 'forest' is way more complex, and includes placement of the garden within the larger geographic and climatic area, and is built and grown by microorganisms, the initial organic matter, insects, mycorrhizae, and many other participants, especially the social context within which the effort takes place.
