Food Forests Across America Campaign Launches

[Jay Ma]

Food Forests Across America on Visionary Culture Radio

On Monday, April 6th, the Food Forests Across America campaign went live with 6 permaculture designers from bioregions respresenting the east to west coasts of the U.S. appearing on Visionary Culture Radio.

Guests Included:
Erik Ohlsen - Founder & Director - Permaculture Earth Artisans
Ethan Roland - Founder & Director - AppleSeed Permaculture
Marisha Auerbach - Founder & Director - Herb 'n Wisdom
Max Meyers - Director - Mendocino Ecological Learning Center
Jay Ma - Co-Founder, Director of Programs and Development - Living Mandala
John Valenzuela - Veteran Permaculture Designer, Educator & Consultant

To listen to the show click the link below.


In an uncertain economy and changing world, local food security is an essential element to becoming sustaibable in this emmerging Green Economy. Join the campaign for local food security and learn how you can help to transform gardens, lawns, parks, and empty spaces into thriving edible landscapes that are beautiful, regenerative, and produce an abundance of delicious, locally grown food!

What is a Food Forest Garden?

Imagine a forest where every single tree is dripping with fresh fruits and ripening nuts. Every shrub is packed with delicious berries, and every other plant is a medicinal herb, culinary spice, or beautiful edible flower. Tubers and root crops are abundant underfoot, gourmet mushroom logs sprout in the shade, and hardy kiwi vines climb back up through the layers of this multi-functional forest of food.

Food forests are diverse gardens modeled after natural ecosystems designed to mimic the way a forest thrives and regenerates. A forest continuously nourishing all elements in the system and produce a vast diversity of outputs, but requires little or no inputs to sustain itself. By recognizing the self-supporting, mutually beneficial relationships of the elements in a forest - from tall trees, smaller trees, shrubs, herbs, ground covers, vines, nitrogen fixers, insectaries, fungi, animals, and more, the food forest garden designs a similar system but replaces the components that are in a common forest with species that are preferred edibles and more useful for humans. The forest then becomes a Garden of Eden, in which edible or useful plants are found from head to toe, where something in season is always ready to eat, and the system requires little or no maintenance to sustain and regenerate.

Where Can I Learn About Forest Gardens?

We recommend the book - Edible Forest Gardens, by Dave Jacke, as well as Permaculture resources, practices, and philosophies.

The best way is to learn how to design and install a Food Forest Garden is by taking a hands-on course.

One of the intentions of this campaign is to catalyze hands-on food forest workshops happening across the country.

To contact the campaign, e-mail: [e-mail]