What is Permaculture Association doing to support forest gardens?
Forest gardens are an increasingly popular practice for providing a variety of products in an ecologically integrated way. This is a discipline led by practitioners, with little systematic research into, or review of, this practice until very recently. Such research is necessary if forest gardens are to fulfil their full potential as one of the ways to address the many challenges we are facing in the 21st century and beyond.
In order to address this gap, the Permaculture Association embarked on a participatory trial program in 2010. The trial aimed to observe ten forest gardens over the first 10 years of their establishment. Our aim was to investigate the ecological, economic and social benefits of forest gardens, and to share these lessons within permaculture, research culture and the wider community.
| Read about the 13 Case studies that came out of the 10-year trial |
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The 10-year Forest Garden Trial
In 2009 the Association received funding to run a ten-year forest garden trial. Eleven projects that were in the process of setting up forest gardens were recruited. The project has now been completed and you can read the Executive Summary and download the full report here!
Baseline data was collected and a small amount of funding provided to each project towards set-up costs. The research focussed on yields, which has been interpreted to include economic, social and bio-diversity yields as well as actual crops harvested.
Read more about our 10 year trial and download the full report!
10-year Forest Garden Trial
Forest Garden Baseline survey
In 2013, Tomas Remiarz (in collaboration with the Association and Permanent Publications) undertook the first comprehensive survey of temperate forest gardens to establish a baseline for further research. Over 100 responses from across Europe and North America helped us to see an emerging picture of the diversity of forest gardens. The initial report of the survey is available via the link below. In 2016-17 we conducted a second, improved version of the survey, adding over 100 more sites to our database. These surveys have now been written up and we are currently (2021) hoping to get them published soon. Researchers who want access to this database of over 250 temperate forest gardens for genuine research purposes should email [email protected]
As part of our 10-year Forest Garden Trial, Karina Ponton created a series of virtual tours. Take a look around some of the forest garden projects which took part in the Permaculture Association's 10-year trial!