permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

>From the Edible Forest Gardens Facebook Page:

"Forest gardening is an idea whose time has come. We can consciously apply
the principles of ecology to the design of home scale and large scale
systems that mimic forest ecosystem structure and function, but grow food,
fuel, fiber, fodder, fertilizer, "farmaceuticals," and fun.

By mimicking the natural balance of Earth's various ecosystems (depending
on what type of garden we want to create), we can make significantly less
work for the gardener, while at the same time decreasing inputs, creating
more diverse, self-sufficient, resilient and beautiful landscapes, and
increasing yields.

Forest gardening is the most high yield, low maintenance, most sustainable
form of agriculture available to humanity. Incorporating knowledge from the
fields of permaculture, indigenous knowledge, agriculture, ecology, biology
and other natural sciences into a holistic set of evolving tools and
techniques, edible forest gardening is one of humanity's greatest hopes for
a stable and prosperous future.

Please learn more about forest gardening and explore the resources below.
If you have any suggestions of links to add, please let me know!"

Good links:

The bible for temperate forest gardening:
http://www.edibleforestgardens.com/about_book

Nice introduction to forest gardens by Mother Earth News:
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Homesteading-and-Self-Reliance/2007-08-01/Plant-Edible-Forest-Garden-Permaculture.aspx

A more thorough introduction to forest gardening:
http://www.edibleforestgardens.com/about_gardening

An excerpt from the book the above information was adapted from, but with a
nice table of example plants and additional information:
http://www.nofa.org/tnf/sp02/supplement/edible.php

Wikipedia on forest gardening:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_gardening

Agroforestry Research Trust in England:
http://www.agroforestry.co.uk/

Plants for a Future database, an incredible, highly detailed, massive
database of useful plants for forest gardens around the world:
http://www.pfaf.org/

North American Native Plant Society:
http://www.nanps.org/