Food Forests: Gardens of Abundance

A food forest is a garden where we encourage nature to do the majority of the work, yet are able to harvest an abundance of fresh food. Sounds too good to be true? Well it’s not! Join us to learn how to create one in any urban, suburban or rural space, even where space is at a premium.

A food forest is modelled on natural woodland, with crops being grown in multiple layers to produce the maximum yield from a minimum of space. Imagine a diverse and multi-layered mix of tree canopy, berry-laden shrubs, vines, ground cover and planting beds. Plants are chosen which benefit each other and attract beneficial inspects. A healthy, fertile and diverse ecosystem is created which ultimately requires little work from you apart from harvesting. Very little digging, watering, weeding or pest control, and as beautiful as any woodland edge!

This four day course, through a combination of classroom based and practical sessions, will give you all the tools you need to design your own food forest.

- Why make a food forest
- Laying out a food forest
- Ensuring that your food forest has enough nutrients
- Multifunctional pathways
- Building in abundance and resilience
- Low maintenance food growing
- Patterns in nature
- Understanding and maximising edge
- Water management
- Creating a detailed design
- Succession planning
- Implementation plans
- Tree and plant guilds

This course will be taught in English by Helder Valente. Helder is native Portuguese, so Portuguese speakers need not worry about translation for troubling words or ideas.

Full course details - www.casalinho.com/courses

This course is immediately followed by another, People Care with Permaculture. Book both courses at a discounted rate.

Price includes all teaching, camping space and vegetarian meals.