Talk:Forest gardening

Diagram

If someone could replace the diagram with a better one, that'd be great. – Quadell ^{(talk) (bounties)} 15:48, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Whats wrong with my diagram? quercus robur 01:55, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

If the handwritten text was replaced by one of these new fangled font things it might be easier to read. --Salix alba (talk) 02:24, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough, but the captions are actually also included in the body text just above the diagram quercus robur 10:44, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

If you drew it using a computer based drawing package, or edited the scanned diagram, so that the background is white rather than grey, that would be fantastic.

Done. quercus robur 09:33, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Only fully developed working permaculture site in the UK?

Robert Harts garden has been described as possibly the only fully developed working permaculture site in the UK. Do we have a reference for this? --Salix alba (talk) 15:44, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I think it may have been Patrick Whitefield, but can't be sure... Or maybe it was uncle Bill Mollison?? quercus robur 16:21, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

anyway i removed the claim, i have seen the site when hart was still alive and it would not even go as far as calling it a working garden. does it actually still exist? Madbishop 14:22, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Based on aerial imaging, the new owners cut down half the trees and replaced it with a lawn =) Matthew Ferguson (talk) 13:12, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

Links

The article includes substantial links. I think those count as references for any practical purpose, so I removed the references warning. Ray Van De Walker 05:10, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

3-dimensional gardening

3-D Gardening is a stupid term. All gardening is actually 4-dimensional since it requires time for the plants to grow. I took that out since it was un-cited and unnecessary. - Plant Scientist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.20.60.196 (talk) 03:35, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

It does make sense as most of are fields are layed out in 2D without really utilising the vertical dimension. I'll leave the removal of the term from the articl as there is not a good reference. --Salix (talk): 07:15, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to add this suggested reference

The concept of forest gardening is integrated in an agroforestry training course described by a document disseminated by Trees for the Future, Inc., a non-profit tree-planting organization based in Silver Spring, Md. The document identifies "Expansion of agricultural land and a variety of human activities" as forces that "have led to deforestation and land degradation in many parts of the world. If this continues, the potential contribution of forests to economic development and ecological stability will not be realized. Developing new natural resource management techniques to address such devastating environmental degradation is important for our rapidly growing world. The lack of training materials for land management, reforestation and agroforestry in many developing nations makes the problem worse." The organization's training guide "Taking Action, Reaching Out," aims to provide the information that will support sustainable land management for economic development that avoids environmental degradation. The publication concludes with a 38-question test leading to a certificate in agroforestry.

References

"Taking Action, Reaching Out" (agroforestry training manual), Trees for the Future, Silver Spring, Md., https://www.treesftf.org/resources/training%20program/english/Agfo_manual_english_small.pdf.

Can someone who knows editing in a wiki article put this in the right format? Thank you. I'm just a reader and I found this Forest Gardening manual quite helpful.] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Theebookman (talk • contribs) 00:52, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

added note:

Letter to the editor of the Forest Gardening article. in Wikipedia...

I am a consultant for abatement of carbon emissions and one of the most effective remedies is to connect forest gardens with sequestration of carbon. The trees planted to absorb carbon are guarded by the local farmers because the concept of the forest garden has shown the farmers that the trees are more valuable in the ground, as the spine of the Forest Garden, than when turned into lumber or firewood. Dave Deppner and the team at TREES in Silver Spring, MD, have produced a useful text that could usefully be added to your list of resources at the end of your wiki article about Forest Gardening. Can you add the link ?

Sincerely,

Steve McCrea Consulttant

TO CONTACT Trees for the Future, publishers of a book about Forest Gardens, please write to dave@treesftf.org

THANK YOU, I hope I haven't created a lot of work for someone by adding this to the discussion page... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Theebookman (talk • contribs) 00:56, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Traditional forest gardens in various countries

It would be good to see some info about traditional forest gardening / agroforestry in various countries. An example would be Kandyan Forest Gardens in Sri Lanka [1]. I haven't added this to the article as it doesn't make sense to add a single country example. Stainless steel cat (talk) 18:46, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Indeed we should mention these, [2] mentions several other types as well "the huertos familiares , the "family orchards" of Mexico, and the pekarangan, the gardens of "complete design" of Java." --Salix (talk): 23:26, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Merger proposal

Proposal - Jarble has proposed that home garden be merged into this article.

Support - Fair enough. Nirvana2013 (talk) 22:08, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

 Done - No objections raised. Nirvana2013 (talk) 15:27, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Nepal

This section needs its references given in full and in standard format. It probably also needs additional references. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Noyster (talk • contribs) 12:04, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Dubious dates for Robert Hart

The period when Robert Hart developed his variation on forest gardening, which is stated with a source to be in the 1980s seems dubious. He says that he was inspired to develop these techniques when reading an article as background for his 1967 book, but his publications have no statement that I can find about when he started forest gardening, as distinct from the forest farming that he had practiced earlier. "During the 1980s" seems unlikely as the period for development, however, that is when his published analyses were published. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:24, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

The citation I've listed says he coined the term "forest gardening" in the 1980s (even though similar methods were practiced in other parts of the world). I remember reading somewhere in Hart's books that his methods at Wenlock Edge were a progression from smallholding with animal husbandry (in the 60s/70s?) to forest gardening. This development may have taken over a decade to complete. As far as I'm aware it all came together in the 80s, culminating in interest from Bill Mollison and Martin Crawford in the 90s. Feel free to cite a source which states he started forest gardening earlier than the 80s. I guess we will need a source in addition to just Hart's own books. Nirvana2013 (talk) 09:33, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

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What!?

So basically, this is yet another neologism regarding combining trees with agriculture? The word agroforestry has existed as a term since the 1970s, apparently this is exactly the same as Hart's coffee-table coinage, thus shouldn't this entire article be merged with that? About a third of the references used for this article use the term "agroforestry", which has a much more academic and international cachet. I was looking at the articles on agroforestry in Dutch, German, French and Spanish, they are all much more clear than the stuff in English. This article "forest gardening" looks as if it just a random collection of links to "permaculture" businesses & various things involving trees -I just removed stuff about the climate of Israel and an arboretum, and an external link leading to a wiki you needed to pay to join to enter. And there is more that should be removed here! Leo Breman (talk) 13:57, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Hi Leo. I believe the term forest gardening was coined in the 1980's so not sure it can be called a "new term" after about 40 years. This is what I understand by the word "neologism" anyway.

Hiya Matthew. Sorry, my cut-off point for calling things new is perhaps too far back. I consider rhubarb a new, modern crop.

Agree completely that the wider topic of agroforestry is more academic and has roots in industrial agriculture, whereas forest gardening is more a form of subsistence farming. It is my personal belief that the only way forest gardening can be economically viable is by selling books/courses/tours related to forest gardening. Absolutely forest gardening has been "made famous" by permaculture. Indeed permaculture in general can be easily criticised as been cult-like and without a firm basis in scientific evidence. It seems the main personalities can be seen to have constructed a parallel set of terminology for ecological processes which were already largely understood by mainstream scientific disciplines. Really permaculture's successs is down to making the science understandable and consumable by amateur persons without any academic or professional background.

Matthew, I thought I knew what permaculture meant, until I read the Wikipedia article on it. Now I know it is a type of magic(k), and everything from chopping down rainforest, to having a tomato plant on your balcony is permaculture, as long as you confuse the heck out of everyone with stuff like "bioholistic ecosocioforest agrotribal enviroculture lifeways (BENAEL)", and you can't go wrong. Sorry, I joke.

In terms of wikipeida, I point out that this term is notable by virtue of meeting the reliable sources requirements (at this point several dedicated books published on the topic). Although, sometimes the terms food forest is used instead, particularly in Australia and USA, although typically such sources make explicitely clear they are discussing the same topic. Just because these books are mainly aimed at non professionals, this does not make the topic not notable. While merger with agroforestry could be done, agroforestry is a broader topic with a much more vague definition. According to some sources (but not all), forest gardening is considered a subtype of agroforestry. The best discussion of how forest gardening fits within the field of agroforestry I have seen is in chapter 1 of Farming the Woods: An Integrated Permaculture Approach to Growing Food and Medicinals in Temperate Forests (you may be able to preview this section on google books: [3].

Furthermore, since we also have dedicated articles on some of the other key practices of agroforestry (e.g. windbreaks, riparian forest buffers, silvopasture) ... I see no reason why this topic does not deserve its own page too. Kind regards, Matthew Ferguson (talk) 18:24, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Having said the above, I do generally support you in removal of sources which do not mention forest gardening / food forests from this article. Matthew Ferguson (talk) 18:26, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

What may have happened here could be explained by a previous entry I just noticed on this talk page - content from the page home garden was merged to this page in the past. Matthew Ferguson (talk) 07:36, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Regarding this article, I wholeheartedly agree with you that it is notable and needs mentioning, but I think it might be improved if all the external links to NGOs and various businesses were culled, and everything that is about agroforestry were moved to that article. To wit, I thought the agroforestry had too much on temperate stuff and too little on tropical -for which that term was originally intended when coined in the 1970s, so I changed that up a bit, and here it is precisely the opposite, too much white dudes ascribing hippy theories to agricultural practices from the tropics. Regards, Leo Breman (talk) 19:47, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Also, 'Forest Gardening' was used as a term for a forestry concept as early as 1893, as it is found in Forest Planting: A Treatise on the Care of Timber Lands by Henry Nicholas Jarchow, on page 62: https://books.google.com/books?id=-mkDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA62&dq=%22Forest+gardening%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjQmN6S8sblAhVTrZ4KHZtRCt8Q6AEwAXoECAYQAg#v=onepage&q=%22Forest%20gardening%22&f=false and the term is also found in William Schlich's 1895 A Manual of Forestry. Dialectric (talk) 16:19, 31 October 2019 (UTC)