Tag: Traditional forest gardens

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The Home Garden; Unit of Humanity

Michael Hoag

  There it is, the basic “Home Garden,” an ancient, evolved forest garden system, similar to those found throughout the tropics, and in one form or another, almost everywhere trees will grow. This beautiful version is from Cuba. (www.hunger-undernutrition.com.) At its most basic level, it’s surrounded by a forest garden planting or enclosure, a mixed function productive hedgerow membrane designed to exclude harmful energies while welcoming and containing beneficial energy flows. Inside, there are areas (organs?) devoted to all the functions necessary for the unit to survive and prosper, areas for vital exchange of information (social functions,) areas for production, … Continue reading The Home Garden; Unit of Humanity

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A Forest Garden for Every Occasion

Michael Hoag

While “Food Forests” or “Forest Gardens” have become something of a gardening fad these days, there’s really nothing new about them at all. In fact, some academic sources have begun calling them “the world’s oldest land use.”   In my opinion, we modern “Forest Gardeners” have a lot to learn from the traditional, slowly-evolved gardens that were once the backbone of cultures around the world. Researchers across many disciplines from Agronomy and economics to ecology and anthropology have delved deeply into the well-known, ancient food forests across the Asian and African tropics (as well as the Amazon, which some researchers … Continue reading A Forest Garden for Every Occasion