FOOD FOREST DESIGN & IMPLEMENTATION SERVICES

Food Forests are the most productive and resilient food producing systems. Once they are established they produce a wide variety of perennial foods with very little inputs for 100's of years into the future. We can help you design and implement food forests for any context.

WHAT IS A FOOD FOREST?

Discover the Beauty of a Food ForestA Food Forest is a living, perennial ecosystem designed to mirror the structure and function of a natural forest — but filled with edible abundance. It brings together food-producing trees, shrubs, herbs, ground covers, climbers, and root crops in harmonious layers, all adapted to your local climate and bio-region. Once established, a food forest becomes largely self-regulating and highly productive, yielding food throughout the seasons. It can integrate small animals like poultry and, when mature, provides deep long-term food security, stunning natural beauty, and the vibrant, life-giving force of nature right in your own homestead.

Advantages of a Food Forest

Why Choose a Food Forest Over a Conventional Garden?

At first glance, the average garden looks nothing like a forest. In many ways, it is the exact opposite. For centuries, people have cleared forests to make way for food production. However, forest gardening (or food forests) offers tremendous advantages by working with nature instead of against it.

Key benefits include:

Higher yields through stacking multiple layers and growing vertically, producing far more food per square metre than traditional gardens.
Reduced pest problems due to the complexity and biodiversity of the system, which naturally balances insect populations.
A beautiful, living ecosystem that provides a wide variety of food, medicines, fibres, and other useful resources while creating a peaceful, energising environment.
The synergy of a mature food forest brings the calming and revitalising force of nature directly into your homestead.
Minimal ongoing inputs once established — dramatically reducing the need for watering, fertilising, and labour.
Regeneration of ecosystem processes on your property, including improved water and mineral cycles, enhanced soil health, and increased biodiversity. It supports birds, insects, and small creatures while capturing large amounts of sunlight and converting it into usable resources such as food, wood, mulch, and genetic material. The forest also provides natural shelter from wind, sun, and frost.

In essence, the food forest becomes not only a highly productive space but also a teacher — guiding us toward deeper harmony with natural systems.

Food Forests reduce inputs in many ways

Placing emphasis on trees, shrubs, perennials, and self-seeding annuals,
Planting thickly and using ground covers to shade soil and suppress weeds,
Utilizing nitrogen-fixing and nutrient-accumulating plants, chop-and-drop techniques, and returning wastes to the land to create healthy soil rather than applying fertilizer,
Planting a diverse array of plants that attract beneficial insects to pollinate the fruit crops and keep pest populations from exploding and causing damage,
Utilizing several ground-shaping techniques to keep rain water on the site, and
Designing for placement of plants to create micro-climates and windbreaks.
Integrating livestock such as poultry to manage weeds, pests and to build soil health. They in turn provide a wide range of products that you can use.

The Structure and Design of a Food Forest

Food Forests have a specific design structure that replicates that of a forest. A forest is not simply a collection of trees, it is defined by a very specific structure, that can be very tall in the case of Tropical Rain-forests or very low and stunted in the case of Desert Thickets. Both are forests, however their environmental contexts create different scales. However the structure of a forest is present in both. If a forest does not have this structure, it is a stand of trees, like a plantation, not a true forest.

A food forest therefore contains this structure to some extent.

Generally, we recognize 7 to 10 layers of a forest garden,depending on climate context.

The emergent layer, which is climate specific and can consist of tall palms that stick out the top of the canopy layer.
The canopy layer which consists of tall trees and there are few of them.
The small tree layer which sits under the overstory and consists of the bulk of the food forest.
The Shrub layer, consisting of productive shrub like plants that often nested under the dripline of the small tree layer.
The Herb layer, which often consists of what we call pioneer plants or plants that perform an ecosystem service in terms of soil fertility and pest control. This can also be berries.
The ground cover layer, which often is leguminous or made up of runners such as Sweet Potato.
The root layer, or underground layer which is made up of bulbs, edible roots, and the mycelium of fungi
The climbing layer, which can be granadilla, grapes, kiwifruit, depending on climate context.
In some contexts the hydro layer exists, which can be pond ecosystems and streams.
The mobile layer, which consists of small production animals that are harvested.

Not all food forests will have all these layers, for example dryland food forests will typically have less plant layers due to water limitations and many of the functions of the different plants will be taken up by animals.

Food forests are complex guilds or polycultures, whereby all the different plants and animals are integrated with each outer in functional relationships. Connections between the elements of a food forest enable it to self-regulate or function like a natural ecosystem.

A guild is a harmonious assembly of species clustered around a central element (plant or animal). This assembly acts in relation to the central element to assist its health, aid our work in management, or buffer adverse environmental effects.

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FOOD FOREST LAYOUT

Food Forests are either established on slope or flatland. In each case the pattern of the food forest differs as a food forest is always planted into a water harvesting earthworks pattern.

Food Forest on Flat Land

Water harvesting earthworks form the mainframe design pattern into which food forests are established. On flat land food forests will follow a mosaic pattern if there is space or a strip pattern if space is limited and it needs to run along a boundary, for example. The trees are evenly spaced and they are planted into a berm and basin or what we call a Tree Pan. This catches and infiltrates rain water around the root zone of the tree and will cover its extent. Run-off water from nearby hard surfaces or slopes are directed into the tree pan, even gray water, overflow from rain tanks, etc. This builds a ground water lens under the tree and its guild that will reduce the need for irrigation.

Food Forest on Slope

When we establish food forests on slope, we use swales as the earthwork foundation so the food forest runs along contour. This not only provides stability it enables water and nutrient to be harvested, spread and infiltrated into the ground. This creates a ground water reserve that the food forest can draw on, substantially reducing irrigation and nutrient input requirements. This system is space efficient and creates an elegant strip forest system that is easy to access, hydrates along contour, which has downslope nutrient and water potential. Food forests are then planted in contour rows, with open areas between swales that can accommodate cropping, pasture, or ornamental systems.