Forest Gardening and Permaculture

Forest gardening (also known as 3-Dimensional Gardening) is a food production and land management system based on replicating woodland ecosystems, but substituting trees (such as fruit or nut trees), bushes, shrubs, herbs and vegetables which have yields directly useful to humans. By exploiting the premise of companion planting, these can be intermixed to grow on multiple levels in the same area, as do the plants in a forest.” For more information go to this Wikipedia page.

Forest Garden Videos on YouTube.com | Google Search on “forest garden”

Roads, Borders and Surrounding Areas
Rather than ornamental landscaping, Yellow Hills Ranch plans to evolve a forest garden in areas in and around improvements. That includes homes, agricultural buildings, roads, the common areas in the workforce housing areas, borders, and other areas.

The goal is to establish an area that beautifies the land while slowly adding to the stock of useful productive plants to support life on the Ranch. You can see how we expect the land use to eventually break down on the Project Page under the “Land Use Proposal”.

 

Cooperative Land

The evolving forest garden area is the area dedicated to “cooperative” land. The forest garden will include areas around residences, border areas along State Road 112, and other areas within the Ranch. Our goal is for approximately 1,375 acres to be dedicated to this use.

This land will be “gardened” by the Ranch in cooperation with community residents and local area residents. Each resident will have an exclusive right of use to a portion of the forest garden area.

There will be a range of incentives to get residents involved in forest gardening. We expect them to fall into two basic categories.

 

Active Forest Gardeners

A resident worker may get involved greenhouses or orchard management for a portion of profits. Other suggestions include a breeding program for working dogs, raising goats to make cheese, or other projects that add to the productive capacity of the land.

 

Passive Forest Gardeners

Some residents will be less active, but they will enjoy being a part of the agricultural fabric. This may be a retiree or a second home buyer whose home is surrounded by an orchard. In this case the forest garden becomes a buffer and an amenity.

When a resident is passive, the Ranch will maintain the right to work the forest garden land around them. The approach will be tailored to the situation. In this case plantings might provide privacy and trees can be harvested or maintained occasionally. In this way it is an amenity, but this land is still part of the agricultural mix.

 

Terms of Use

The cooperative land is owned by the Ranch, but residents enjoy an exclusive right of use that goes with their land. This right is permanently recorded with their parcel, subject to an agreement regarding its use as a part of the overall agricultural scheme.

Forest Garden Graphic

Based on the observations in the natural forest, forest gardens are divided into distinct layers or “stories”. Among the larger trees other plants are inter-cropped.  For example, one might create an orchard of apples and pears into an edible polyculture landscape consisting of several levels. (Wikipedia Reference)