Product Description

Volume One of the two-volume set, Edible Forest Gardens, begins with an overview of the ecological and cultural context for forest gardening in modern North America. It also lays out a holistic vision that guides the study of forest ecology that follows. This ecological exploration forms the bulk of Volume One, and offers clear and specific direction for forest garden design and management. Three forest garden case studies ground the concepts discussed in the book and bring them life. Volume One concludes with colorful descriptions of forest gardening's "Top 100" species, and useful listings of information and organizational resources.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #156993 in Books
• Published on: 2005-08-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 396 pages

Review
A New Vision
Plants and Gardens News
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
by Patricia Jonas
But even if you grow enough organic food to feed yourself, are you doing what's best for the ecosystem? "Many drawbacks of modern agriculture persist in organic farming and gardening," Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier write in Edible Forest Gardens, because they do not "mimic the structure of natural systems, only selected functions." Even Quail Hill Farm members are still harvesting mostly annual crops grown in plowed fields. Jacke and Toensmeier offer a radical vision for stepping out of the conceptual continuum of conventional agriculture and organic farming. They point to the productivity of temperate forests—which is twice that of agricultural land in terms of net calories—and take that as their design model. Building on Robert Hart's classic book, Forest Gardening, and incorporating permaculture practice, Jacke and Toensmeier propose a garden where many species of edible perennial plants are grown together in a design that mimics forest structure and function.
Edible Forest Gardens is an ambitious two-volume work whose influence should extend well beyond ecologists and permaculturists and, in the best of all outcomes, reach into the mainstream. Volume one lays out the "Ecological Vision and Theory for Temperate Climate Permaculture," and it also includes a very useful analysis of existing forest gardens (one only 50 by 90 feet) and a tantalizing 30-page appendix of "top 100" species. As of this writing, volume two, which focuses on practical design and maintenance considerations, is just being released, but on the evidence of volume one, I have no doubt the set will be an indispensable reference for gardeners and farmers for decades.
"When people have food gardens," the authors write, "they usually are tucked out of sight and out of view of the neighbors. They rely on external inputs of energy, nutrients, insect and disease controls, and water and are based primarily on annual plants. For some reason, growing food is considered unsightly, unseemly, possibly antisocial, and in some towns and cities, illegal! The tremendous infrastructure we have built in our cities and towns reflects a culture and horticulture of separation and isolation." The consequences of such attitudes about growing food have been disastrous, and each of us can contribute to the repair effort. Jacke and Toensmeier say that the principles of forest gardening can be applied even in a tiny urban yard or on a rooftop. Containers of edible perennials and annuals on a rooftop are not most farmers' idea of agriculture, but I grow nearly 20 percent of the authors' top 100 species and intend to look for ways to take this small start much further.
And what about chocolate and oranges? Clearly there are foods that cannot be grown in a temperate forest. "We do not expect forest gardening to replace regular gardening or the foods we know and love," the authors admit. "Just how far we can take forest gardening in supplying food for ourselves is not yet determined." Finding the answer may be the most optimistic work gardeners and farmers can do.

Review from Bookwatch
November 2005
Don't expect the usual light gardening guide reading, Volume 1 of Edible Forest Gardens: Ecological Vision and Theory for Temperate Climate Permaculture packs in serious surveys of the ancient practice of forest gardening, which offers homeowners and gardeners a new way of viewing modern home landscaping and nature. Useful plants can be blended to supply daily needs, the land can be 'untamed' to return support to healthy populations of plant and animal species. Years of experience goes into Edible Forest Gardens; this first volume provides a review of the ecological and cultural foundations for recognizing forest gardening as a viable ecological alternative in modern North America. Dave Jacke runs his own ecological design firm consulting on permaculture and landscapes around the world; his co-author Eric Toensmeier founded the former Perennial Vegetable Seed Company and has worked with the New England Small Farm Institute. A highly recommended pick; especially for college-level and serious collections on permaculture and horticulture.

From the Publisher
"...But the book I will be keeping by me for the seasons ahead... is Edible Forest Gardens by Dave Jacke with Eric Toensmeier. In its way this book--the first of two volumes--is a sequel to the wonderful Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture (1929) by J. Russell Smith.... Edible Forest Gardens offers a vision of the garden that reaches well beneath its aesthetic surface and into its ecological depths. It reminds us that whatever gardens are an oasis from, they can never be an oasis from the natural world or our own underlying economic needs." --Verlyn Klinkenborg The New York Times Book Review June 5, 2005

"This is certainly the most thorough and realistic assessment of the potential for temperate perennial-based gardening that I have seen -- and I've read everything I've been able to find on temperate perennial crops, going back to J. Russell Smith and John Hershey...

The first volume of Edible Forest Gardens is a superb primer on ecology as it relates to horticulture in general, and I highly recommend it even for gardeners who aren't primarily interested in useful perennials..." --Greg Williams Publisher, Hort Ideas

From the Inside Flap
From the Introduction: An Invitation to Adventure

Picture yourself in a forest where almost everything around you is food. Mature and maturing fruit and nut trees form an open canopy. If you look carefully, you can see fruits swelling on many branches—pears, apples, persimmons, pecans, and chestnuts. Shrubs fill the gaps in the canopy. They bear raspberries, blueberries, currants, hazelnuts, and other lesser-known fruits, flowers, and nuts at different times of the year. Assorted native wildflowers, wild edibles, herbs, and perennial vegetables thickly cover the ground. You use many of these plants for food or medicine. Some attract beneficial insects, birds, and butterflies. Others act as soil builders, or simply help keep out weeds. Here and there vines climb on trees, shrubs, or arbors with fruit hanging through the foliage—hardy kiwis, grapes, and passionflower fruits. In sunnier glades large stands of Jerusalem artichokes grow together with groundnut vines. These plants support one another as they store energy in their! roots for later harvest and winter storage. Their bright yellow and deep violet flowers enjoy the radiant warmth from the sky.

What Is an Edible Forest Garden?

An edible forest garden is a perennial polyculture of multipurpose plants. Most plants regrow every year without replanting: perennials. Many species grow together: a polyculture. Each plant contributes to the success of the whole by fulfilling many functions: multipurpose. In other words, a forest garden is an edible ecosystem, a consciously designed community of mutually beneficial plants and animals intended for human food production. Edible forest gardens provide more than just a variety of foods. The seven F’s apply here: food, fuel, fiber, fodder, fertilizer, and "farmaceuticals," as well as fun. A beautiful, lush environment can be a conscious focus of your garden design, or a side benefit you enjoy (see Figure 0.1).

Forest gardens mimic forest ecosystems, those natural perennial polycultures once found throughout the world’s humid climates. In much of North America, your garden would soon start reverting to forest if you were to stop tilling and weeding it. Annual and perennial weeds would first colonize the bare soil. Shrubs would soon shade out the weeds. Then, sun-loving pioneer trees would move in and a forest would be born. Eventually, even these pioneers would succumb to longer-lived, more shade-tolerant species. It can take many decades for this process, called succession, to result in a mature forest.

We humans work hard to hold back succession—mowing, weeding, plowing, and spraying. If the successional process were the wind, we would be constantly motoring against it. Why not put up a sail and glide along with the land’s natural tendency to become forest? Edible forest gardening is about expanding the horizons of our food gardening across the full range of the successional sequence, from field to forest, and everything in between.

Besides the food and other products, you should design your forest garden for self-renewing, self-fertilizing self-maintenance. For a self-renewing garden, plant mainly perennials or self-sowing annuals. Allow a healthy soil community to develop by mulching and leaving the soil undisturbed. Build soil fertility with plants that fix nitrogen, amass soil minerals, act as mulch sources, or a blend of these. Reduce or eliminate your pest control work by providing food and shelter for insectivorous birds, and predatory and parasitic insects. Fragrant plants, such as onions, may confuse insect pests and slow their march toward your crops. In fact, you can reduce pest and disease problems simply by mixing things up, rather than planting in blocks of the same species! All these things, and more, reduce the amount of maintenance your garden needs and increase its yields. When we mimic how nature works and design well, we can reduce the work of sustaining ourselves to mulching, some pruning, occasional weeding, and minimal pest and disease management (depending on the crops you grow). Oh, and then there’s the harvesting!

Essentially, edible forest gardening is the art and science of putting plants together in woodland-like patterns that forge mutually beneficial relationships, creating a garden ecosystem that is more than the sum of its parts. You can grow fruits, nuts, vegetables, herbs, mushrooms, other useful plants, and animals in a way that mimics natural ecosystems. You can create a beautiful, diverse, high-yield garden that is largely self-maintained.

Gardening LIKE the Forest vs. Gardening IN the Forest

Edible forest gardening is not necessarily gardening in the forest. It is gardening like the forest. You don’t need to have an existing woodland if you want to forest garden, though you can certainly work with one. Forest gardeners use the forest as a design metaphor, a model of structure and function, while adapting the design to focus on meeting human needs in a small space. We learn how forests work and then participate in the creation of an ecosystem in our backyards that can teach us things about ecology and ourselves while we eat our way through it. Gardening like a forest is what this book is all about.

Gardening in the forest is different. We can transform an existing piece of woodland into an edible forest garden, and this book will explain how, but there are many other ways to garden in the forest. These include the restoration of natural woodlands, ecological forestry, and the creation of primarily aesthetic woodland gardens. The latter forms of gardening in the forest are not what this book is about. If you want to garden in the forest in any of those ways, see the resources listed in the appendix. If you want to grow food in a garden like a forest, read on.

Customer Reviews

Incredible resource for applied agro-ecological development
This book adds depth to the existing research in agro-ecology. It provides new information and examples specific to temperate, especially warmer-temperate climates. It also highlights applications of this information in the first section: "Vision." The authors have put together a massive work that will certainly serve my reference for years to come. This work is primarily an information-packed textbook that includes much in the way of strategies and principles which apply to all biological development of landscapes. In this regard the book can serve as a text in any regenerative landscape studies.

For me, the most valuable aspects of this book are:
-the articulation of integrated design principles (so many good one's under one cover)
-the masterful graphics (who did them all?)
-the development and refining of new language for thinking about agro-ecosystems. E.g. they've taken out the word "invasive" and use the word "opportunist" instead; advancing our approach in this perennial challenge and contextualizing it in a more proper problem-solving/use-based approach, as opposed to the useless conservationist/alarmist approach that can't find the leverage.
-the case studies, although I wish there were more.
-The "top 100" plant list for temperate climates = awesome resource.
-the depth of research (which is fairly mind-blowing) including aspects such as cross sectional mapping of root systems, nutrient flows in agro-ecosystems, and much much more.

It is obvious why this book has taken many years to produce.
I am left with several confusions/questions. One is the name: "Forest" gardening. The authors show the differences between forest and woodland systems (as in % canopy cover) and are clearly explaining strategies for WOODLAND gardening with some light coming in through a partially open canopy. "Edible Woodland Gardening" would make more sense and the term Forest is a bit misleading. (This is not a book about mushroom cultivation, or understory crops alone). Maybe it's simply that woodland is a fairly unused term in the States.
Another frustration is in the case studies/examples. The case studies are few and examples of strategy applications are brief. They are also only from fairly warm-temperate sites: southern England, North Carolina, etc. I did not see any from New England, for instance, where both authors reside. Of course there are not an abundance of sites to use as examples, but there are many more than are shown. I wonder why the Bullock Bros. woodland garden in a temperate region of the US was not highlighted or referenced, for instance. I am hoping that Volume II has more of these case studies.

Overall an incredible work of research with an applied focus and a super useful source of ecological design principles that are crucial for any student in any field connected with biological landscape development.

Ben Falk
Whole Systems Design, LLC
Moretown, Vermont, USA

Awesome Forest Garden
This book is incredible and could very well change your life!

Unlike other works on permaculture and ecological agriculture, which discuss simple principles derived from ecology, Jakce dives into the real workings of forest ecology and humanity's role (and potential role) in this ecology.

While technically impressive, the real merit of this book is the quality of writing. It reads like a novel while conveying complex ecological ideas and their practical application.

It truly offers hope for a beautiful and delicious post-petroleum food production system.

Check it out now!
And then get gardening like the forest!!

Volume One on Theory and Vision
This is a beautiful and well-designed book. It draws on a very large number of ecological and forestry publications, with full references. The chapter end-notes are easy to use and refer to an appended bibliography. Numerous colour photographs, and diagrams illustrate the concepts. Both as text and as a reference it will retain its value.

There are many tough patches of ecological complexity, and of subtle theory. Numerous times I could read a few pages only until I had come to understand some difficult to grasp concept, then I would need to put the book down as the authors started a fresh mental adventure. Review after each chapter could be helpful during reading, but I continued to finish, and now plan to solidify understanding by going over pencil-marked passages. Throughout, even difficult topics are made clear.

A highlight to me was the authors' masterful handling of the various theories of ecological succession, brief comments on their historical development, and preliminary discussion of how they can be used in design and management. Their enthusiasm and humor, allowed only occasional brief exposure up to this point, break through here as they repeatedly state the need for freedom, experimentation, and fun.

I found the introductory portions inspirational, also the final text portions and the catalogue of 100 most useful plants--I skipped ahead and read this listing to get a break from the theory and to see what plants could be used in my northern boreal forest location.

If this instructional and authoritative volume had been available in the 1970s, we might now have more commonly available permaculture forests and gardens for practical examination and evaluation, and a generation of working designers.

Volume Two on design and practice sits on my shelf. What a delightful problem deciding whether to start reading it or look back on Volume One!