Category: Food Forest
A sustainable lifestyle website wouldn’t be complete without a section on the garden. But we’ve called our garden category The Food Forest in honour of the permaculture design concept of the same name. The backyard food forest contains more than food – there’s space to live and play, space for wildlife, and maybe even pets – but inherent in the idea is the sense that the food part of the design is not limited to a small, discrete vegetable plot at the bottom of the garden. This garden is filled with food, for wildlife and people alike.
There are fast growing fruit trees espaliered along fence lines, evergreen Warrigal (New Zealand spinach), interspersed with other understory plants, blueberry bushes in tubs, rambling pumpkins trailing over shrubs and perhaps the front lawn. There may be chickens (chooks, in the Australian venacular) wandering around, or carefully placed in portable chook domes, a la Linda Woodrow. Or perhaps there’s a beehive or frog pond or worm farm, or all four sets of helpful workers inhabiting the garden.
Of course, a sustainable home doesn’t have to base it’s garden design around permaculture, but it’s certainaly a good place to start.
