Seven Layers of a Food Forest

Posted by admin on Jul 22, 2010 in Food Forests, Permaculture | 0 comments

Walking through a Food Forest can be bewildering experience at first as you try to understand all the design features inherent in Nature. The canopy and diversity of the forest in its complexity can be hard to comprehend at first. Geoff Lawton once remarked that he felt many of his permaculture students had a lot of difficulty seeing the structural features of a forest. So how do you make sense of it all if you don’t have a botanist’s knowledge of plants?

In designing a food forest system, lets break it down visually to the seven basic patterns that define the look and feel of a food forest. By working with these patterns we can simplify the design process to its essentials and then gradually reiterate these patterns when we design and plant out our forest with added plant complexity. Think of these seven patterns as notes on a musical scale that could be used repeatedly to build your forest into a symphony of form and function.

Lets kick off our Food Forest by building it next to a water harvesting swale. A swale system that is built on contour can soak rainwater into the soft lower mound and be a constant source of moisture for our plants.

Think of this list as a recipe of shapes that define the patterns of a forest.

Canopy
The top Canopy (10m+) layer towers above your forest. Nut trees such as Walnut and Pecan, Coconuts, Cabinet Timber trees and various shade and wind-break trees can also be grouped into this lot.

Low Tree layer
Smaller fruit trees (3-9m), plums. peaches apples and pears, pawpaw, custard apples, lemons and orange trees. Faster growing leguminous pioneers can also fit into this category. Shorter living trees can be recycled for their mulch, shade and nitrogen capabilities.

Shrubs
Bushy Shrub plants (up to 3m) such as Currents, Gooseberry, Raspberry, Blueberries, Blackcurrents can be used.

Herbaceous
Perennial herbs and vegetables such as Thyme, Sage, Rosemary and various Medicinal Herbs, Onions, Rhubarb, Asparagus, Chives, Yarrow, Mustard Greens and Comfrey all fit into this category.

Rhizosphere
The Root Zone or underground area, allows Artichokes, Yams, even Mushrooms to coexist. Garlic, Yacon, Shallots, Horseradish and Ginger.

Ground Cover Plants
Nitrogen fixing green manure plants like alfalfa, clover, vetch, and winter rye grow quickly and then break down, providing nutrients for the soil and a boost for the other plants living in this community. Even annuals such as pumpkin can be inter-planted between the trees to sprawl out and fill in the gaps.

Vertical Climbers
Grapes, passion-fruit, Beans, Peas, Runners and assorted vines.

The construction of a Food Forest can be very low maintenance affair if some careful planning goes into the initial design process. By integrating these 7 layers into our designs and alternating the patterns with a variety of different plant species we can build an amazing complex Food Forest system that goes on for years providing an endless supply of food, moderating the local climate around it as well as a becoming a habitat for all sorts of creatures that live nearby.