food forest – Love Plant Life

Inspired by Geoff Lawton’s Establishing a Food Forest, a group has got together to explore the potential of food forest gardening on the Kapiti Coast. Our vision is to build a community food forest garden for Kapiti.

Planned, planted and maintained by the community, the forest garden will serve as an education resource, plant nursery, seed bank, outdoor community centre, meeting point and food bank. Accessible to all, the area will become an edible landscape with walkways and glades, natural in look but designed with our needs for sustenance and play. A living repository for the future, in the heart of our community.

We’ve been doing a lot of talking, thinking, researching and come up with a document that we think encompasses the project’s heart. Now, we need some input and some support from you.

Have a read of the Kapiti Community Food Forest Proposal
Please do send us an email answering the following questions:

1. Do you support in principle the establishment of a community food forest in Kapiti?

2. Would you be willing to be part of a group of volunteers that is responsible for the establishment and maintenance of a Kapiti community food forest ?

3. Do you have any resources (land or money) you would be willing to donate to help to establish the Kapiti community food forest?

First in a series looking at wonderful world of food forests, or forest gardening.

A food forest, also called a forest garden, is a productive and organic garden modeled on the ecosystem of a forest. Species are selected to create a stable, functioning environment that fulfill the needs of the gardeners by producing fruits, berries, vegetables, herbs, seeds and other useful plant material.

Each plant performs many multiple roles within the system – promoting growth of other plants, inhibiting weeds, shelter, mulch, pest control, bird food, cross-pollination, attracting beneficial insects and of course providing food, medicine and utility plants for community use.

Food forests are:
– consciously designed using permaculture principles which mimic natural systems;
– multi-layered – trees and shrubs grow surrounded by a herbaceous layer, root crops, vines;
– perennial – plants grow every year without replanting;
– highly productive;
– biodiverse;
– beautiful;
– self-renewing;
– self-fertilising;
– once established, can be low-maintenance.

Posts

Kapiti Community Food Forest

Food Forest Gardening Intro

Love Plant Life Magazine

Plant Profiles

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