Showing posts with label Urban Native Plant Food and Medicine Forest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Urban Native Plant Food and Medicine Forest. Show all posts

Friday, September 4, 2015

Urban Native Plant Food and Medicine Forest

By Liliana Usvat    
Blog 357-365


I never Understood why cities with large areas in their property do not plant Native Fruit Trees in Parks and bare land.















Why the sidewalks do not have fruit trees planted? It is not Hard to choose between a tree that produce fruits and a tree that produce nothing. Or even worse have no trees on the side walks.

Native and endemic plants provide habitat for other native species which may be endangered. The expression “build it and they will come” applies here. In this way, permaculturists can play the role of restoration conservationist while building a community around food sovereignty and re-skilling. 

Many species need a specific habitat in which to nest or harvest food. There could be species that are native to your area which pollinate crops in my area, and if they don’t have anywhere to live, my part of the world would suffer.
 
Biodiversity is a critical aspect of the discussions surrounding food security, environmental conservation, and the health of our planet in the years to come. Permaculture is on the cutting edge of agriculture in that it considers biodiversity in planning systems. As Bill Mollison classically puts it, “you don’t have a slug problem, you have a duck deficiency.” 

A dynamic, resilient, productive, thriving system that has the power to provide for the people and restore the health of the planet.

With droughts, wildfires, and temperatures on the rise, precious forests are disappearing at a mind boggling rate. We know permaculture is a solution to this, as far as water catchment, soil building, and shade-creation are concerned. 

There is something to be said for restoring the plants which originated in your place of residence–because as we lose those forests, we lose the animals too, which exacerbates the problem.

Since native forests are environmental balancers and regulators, we might as well give them some leverage. Native plants are well suited for the area you live in, and will require less babying and human input as a result.  

The native plant food and medicine forests can sequester carbon, produce rain, and lower temperatures, and the planet finds its equilibrium. 

The end result: neighborhoods with yards full of native and endemic species, with the cultural knowledge of their uses revitalized.

When planning an endemic and native plant food and medicine forest, there’s no better way to learn than getting out into the woods, observing, and harvesting.

Planting, observing, and harvesting plants is an activity people of all ages, ability levels, and beliefs can enjoy together. It has the power to bring people together, cross-culturally, beyond the language barrier. It can unite people beyond the invisible walls that differences in income, religion, identity, and so on. 

What better way to gain a sense of place, belonging, and community than to come to know the original inhabitants? 

 Edible forest gardening 


 Edible forest gardening is the art and science of putting plants together in woodlandlike patterns that forge mutually beneficial relationships, creating a garden ecosystem that is more than the sum of its parts. You can grow fruits, nuts, vegetables, herbs, mushrooms, other useful plants, and animals in a way that mimics natural ecosystems. You can create a beautiful, diverse, high-yield garden. If designed with care and deep understanding of ecosystem function, you can also design a garden that is largely self-maintaining. In many of the world's temperate-climate regions, your garden would soon start reverting to forest if you were to stop managing it. We humans work hard to hold back succession—mowing, weeding, plowing, and spraying. If the successional process were the wind, we would be constantly motoring against it. Why not put up a sail and glide along with the land's natural tendency to grow trees? By mimicking the structure and function of forest ecosystems we can gain a number of benefits.
Why Grow an Edible Forest Garden?
While each forest gardener will have unique design goals, forest gardening in general has three primary practical intentions:

  • High yields of diverse products such as food, fuel, fiber, fodder, fertilizer, 'farmaceuticals' and fun;
  • A largely self-maintaining garden and;
  • A healthy ecosystem.
These three goals are mutually reinforcing. For example, diverse crops make it easier to design a healthy, self-maintaining ecosystem, and a healthy garden ecosystem should have reduced maintenance requirements. However, forest gardening also has higher aims.


Where Can You Grow an Edible Forest Garden?
  Anyone with a patch of land can grow a forest garden. They've been created in small urban yards and large parks, on suburban lots, and in small plots of rural farms. The smallest we have seen was a 30 by 50 foot (9 by 15 m) embankment behind an urban housing project, and smaller versions are definitely possible.


Architecture
  Contrary to the prevailing wisdom on forest gardening, vegetation layers are only one of the architectural features important in forest garden design. Soil horizon structure, vegetation patterning, vegetation density, and community diversity are also critical. All five of these elements of community architecture influence yields, plant health, pest and disease dynamics, maintenance requirements, and overall community character. For example, scientific research indicates that structural diversity in forest vegetation, what we call "lumpy texture," appears to increase bird and insect population diversity and to balance insect pest populations—independent of plant species diversity. Learning how and why plants pattern themselves in nature and about the effects of the diverse kinds of diversity on ecosystem function can add great richness to the tool box of the forest gardener.


 Links

http://www.wildernesscollege.com/plants-used-for-medicine.html 

http://www.urbanecology.ca/documents/Student%20Technical%20Series/KingH.pdf

http://www.edibleforestgardens.com/about_gardening

https://nakazora.wordpress.com/category/natural-farming-forest-gardening/