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SEVEN STOREYS OF ABUNDANCE; A VISIT TO ROBERT HART’S FOREST GARDEN
Following the Permaculture Design Course run by ‘Naturewise’ in the Spring 1997, a group of graduates decided to visit what has been described as possibly the only fully developed working Permaculture site in the UK, Robert Hart’s Forest Garden.
Situated at Wenlock Edge on the Welsh borders, Robert began the project over thirty years ago with the intention of providing a healthy and therapuetic environment for himself and his brother Lacon, born with severe learning disabilities.
Starting as relatively conventional smallholders, Robert soon discovered that maintaining large annual vegetable beds, rearing livestock and taking care of an orchard were tasks beyond their strength. However, he also observed that a small bed of perennial vegetables and herbs they had planted up was looking after itself with little or no intervention. Furthermore, these plants provided interesting and unusual additions to the diet, as well as seeming to promote health and vigour in both body and mind.
Noting the maxim of Hippocrates to “make food your medicine and medicine your food”, Robert adopted a vegan, 90% raw food diet. He also began to examine the interactions and relationships that take place between plants in natural systems, particularly in woodland, the climax eco-system of a cool temperate region such as the British Isles. This led him to evolve the concept of the ‘Forest Garden’: Based on the observation that the natural forest can be divided into distinct layers or ‘storeys’, he developed an existing small orchard of apples and pears into an edible landscape consisting of seven dimensions;
I)A ‘canopy’ layer consisting of the original mature fruit trees.
2)A ‘low-tree’ layer of smaller nut and fruit trees on dwarfing root stocks.
3)A ‘shrub layer’ of fruit bushes such as currants and berries.
4)A ‘herbaceous layer’ of perennial vegetables and herbs.
5)A ‘ground cover’ layer of edible plants that spread horizontally.
6)A ‘rhizosphere’ or ‘underground’ dimension of plants grown for their roots and tubers.
7)A vertical ‘layer’ of vines and climbers.
Stepping into the Forest Garden is like entering another world. All around is lushness and abundance, a sharp contrast to the dust bowl aridity of the surrounding prairie farmed fields and farmlands. At first the sheer profusion of growth is bewildering, like entering a wild wood. We’re not used to productive landscapes appearing so disorderly. But it doesn’t take long for the true harmony of nature’s systems to reveal themselves, and the realisation sinks in that in fact it is the Agribiz monocultures, with their heavy machinery, genetic manipulation, erosion, high water inputs, pesticides and fertilisers which are in a total state of maintained chaos. Whereas hectares of land may produce bushel after bushel of but one crop, genetically degraded and totally vulnerable to ever more virulent strains of pest and disease without the dubious protection of massive chemical inputs, just an eighth of an acre of a garden such as Robert’s can output a tremendous variety of yields. Whilst too early in the year for the apples, plums and pears beginning to swell in the trees, we were surrounded by gluts of black, red and whitecurrants, gooseberries, raspberries and loganberries; as well as a profusion of saladings such as sorrel, lovage, tree-onions, wild garlic, borage, lemon balm and many other herbs.
Foraging a meal for the nine of us was an extremely enjoyable task, not like work at all. Robert, a gentle and erudite man, yet possessed of a great clarity of purpose, joined us for our campfire feast. As we sat and chatted into the evening he explained his motivations and hopes for the future. Of his plans to expand the original Forest Garden, and his dream of a network of such gardens covering not only Britain but the world, bringing an abundance of natural food, and healing to both peoplekind and the planet. He spoke of his philosophical inspiration by figures as diverse as John Seymour, Ghandi, Kropotkin and Kagawa; of the antecedents of the Forest Garden such as the ‘home gardens’ of Kerala, where most of the land is covered with productive trees; and later sang us songs that he used to share with his late brother Lacon, including those of murdered Chilean land and human rights campaigner Victor Jara.
This was a magical evening, an illustration that perhaps the primary forces within the Forest Garden are of spirituality and peace. Whilst being highly productive of nuts, fruits, fresh perennial vegetables and medicinal herbs, the most important yield of this place is the reminder that there is much more to how we find sustenance as human beings than what we consume, than looking at our sources of nourishment purely in terms of net tonnes per hectare. The forest garden is an idea whose time has come.
”Obviously, few of us are in a position to restore the forests.. But tens of millions of us have gardens, or access to open spaces such as industrial wastelands, where trees can be planted. and if full advantage can be taken of the potentialities that are available even in heavily built up areas, new ‘city forests’ can arise...” (Robert A.de J.Hart)
GRAHAM BURNETT
(Taken from VOHAN News International, issue 2, available from ‘Anandavan, 58 High Lane, Chorlton, Manchester, M21 9DZ, UK)
Poinformuj znajomych:
"I have to wake up every morning and be optimisic... I'm designer."
– William McDonough
"The blending of architecture, solar, wind, biological and electronic technologies with housing, food production, and waste utilization within an ecological and cultural context will be the basis of creating a new design science for the post-petroleum era."
– John Todd
"Permaculture is the use of ecology as the basis for designing integrated systems of food production, housing
appropriate technology and community development. It offers a practical, creative approach to the problems of diminishing resources and threatened life support systems now facing the world."
– Simon Henderson
"Permaculture is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive systems which have the
diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of the landscape with people providing their food, energy, shelter and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way."
– Graham Bell
"Adopting permaculture in your garden could be the first step towards limiting your personal consumption and planning your life to become more creative as time goes by."
– Graham Bell
"Permaculture is revolution disguised as organic gardening."
– Graham Burnett
"Observe Nature thoughrully rather than labour thoughtlessly."
– Masanobu Fukuoka
"Permaculture is defined as consciously designed landscapes which mimic the patterns and relationships found in nature, while yielding an abundance of food, fibre and energy for the provision of local needs…more precisely I see Permaculture as the use of systems thinking and design principles that provide the organising framework for implementing the above vision."
– David Holmgren
"... everything is in continuous motion."
– Goethe
"Biomass is the keeper of organization."
– Ramon Margalef
"Organisms that inhabit similar environments in different geographical localities often resemble each other even though their evolutionary backgrounds differ... Form and function converge under the mantle of similar selective forces in the environment."
– Robert E. Ricklefs
"Function reforms form, perpetually."
– Steward Brand
"Ecological communities are not as tightly linked as organisms, but neither are they simply collections of individuals. Rather, the community is a unique form of biological system in which the individuality of the parts (i.e., species and individuals) acts paradoxically to bind the system together."
– David Perry
"... theory gives fresh meaning to old places, connects the seemingly unrelated, and guides action."
– Anne Whiston Spirn
"The map is not the territory."
– Eric Bell
"As far as possible, men are to be taught to become wise not only by books, but by the heavens, the earth, oaks and beeches."
– Comenius
"We see things not as they are. We see things as we are."
– The Talmud
"By mimicking a natural vegetation structure, farmers can copy a whole package of patterns and processes that have developed and worked in an ecological or evolutionary time frame. With this structural approach, a multitude of beneficial processes can be incorporated into agroecosystems."
– Judith Soule and Jon Piper
"A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."
– Aldo Leopold
"We all have the forest in our blood."
– Robert A. de J. Hart
"We cannot solve the significant problems we face at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."
– Albert Einstein
"The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings."
– Masanobu Fukuoka
“All knowledge is connected to all other knowledge. The fun is in making the connections.”
- Arthur Aufderheide
“For the first time in history it is now possible to take care of everybody at a higher standard of living than any have ever known. Only ten years ago the ‘more with less’ technology reached the point where this could be done. All humanity now has the option to become enduringly successful.”
- Richard Buckminster Fuller
"Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early successes, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more unpropitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper that hope is. Hope is definitely not the same as optimism."
- Vaclav Havel
"Cathedrals are incredible testaments to human endeavour. It is not only
their grandeur or splendour, but the thought that they often took more
than fifty years to build. Those who designed them, those who first
worked on them, knew for certain that they would never see them
finished. They knew only that they were creating something glorious
which would stand for centuries, long after their own names had been
forgotten.....
We may not need any more cathedrals but we do need
cathedral thinkers, people who can think beyond their own lifetimes."
- Charles Handy
“Truly appropriate technology is technology that ordinary people can use for their own benefit and the benefit of their community, that doesn't make them dependent on systems over which they have no control.”
– John F.C. Turner
“You will not do incredible things without an incredible dream.”
– John Eliot
“Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinion drowned your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what yo truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
– Steve Jobs
"It's not enough to have handful of heroes, what we need is generations of responsible people"
– Richard Lamm
COHABITATGROUP 2007 - 2010
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