#forestgardens

The #Moroccan #FoodForest That Inspired an #AgriculturalRevolution These ancient forest gardens may be more relevant than ever. by Eric J. Wallace April 1, 2019 "It was 1975 and Geoff Lawton was wintering with friends in Morocco. Camping on beaches north of Agadir, they’d been surfing for weeks when locals told them about Paradise Valley. Located along the Tamraght River in the High Atlas Mountains, it promised 5,200-foot vistas, blue-green waterfalls, and lush, rainforest-like vegetation. "Lawton, then 21, was on his first trip outside the U.K. 'Tourists had yet to ‘discover’ the area, so the culture was very much preserved,' he says. 'For me, it was like going back to Biblical times.' "The dirt road to the Valley climbed through a barren, arid landscape into rural hills studded with mud brick homes. Twenty kilometers in, the group stopped at the tiny village of Inraren for directions. Lawton went to relieve himself in a roadside wood. " 'I remember thinking it was odd that this lush, green forest should be bursting from the desert,' he says. "Stepping inside, things got stranger. The air felt cool, almost misty. Growing in the shade of tall date palms were trees, vines, and shrubs bearing bananas, tamarinds, oranges, figs, guavas, pomegranates, lemons, limes, mulberries, carobs, quince, grapes, and other fruits and nuts. Following a footpath through the grassy understory past groves of olive and argan trees, Lawton discovered a cluster of fenced-in vegetable and herb gardens—most about a quarter-acre in size. Here and there, goats were tethered to posts. Chickens clucked through the underbrush and roosted in trees. Gazing down a leafy corridor, he spotted a man leading a donkey. Its saddlebags brimmed with produce. " 'I felt like I’d wandered into some kind of ancient organism,' says Lawton. “I had goosebumps all over.' "Totaling about 65 acres, the food forest was a remnant of one of the world’s oldest #sustainable systems of agriculture. While its origins have been lost to history, scientists agree it is at least many centuries old. Some, including Lawton, date its establishment to 2,000 years ago. When asked about the forest’s age, villagers shrug. " 'I have no idea how old it is or when our ancestors first began gardening here,' says 45-year-old Abdelmajid Ziyani, a construction worker and member of a local argan and olive oil cooperative. 'But I know it has been here for centuries.' " Related video: "The 2000 Year Old Food Forest in Morocco - Discover Permaculture with Geoff Lawton" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wd-b_C7a_es Read more: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-permaculture-food-forests #SolarPunkSunday #ForestGardens #UndergroundSprings #Permaculture #AncientFoodForests #SustainableAgriculture #History #AgricultureHistory #Histodon #TraditionalAgriculture

The “#ForestGardens” That Could Help #Canada’s #FirstNations Reclaim Their Land For 3,000 years, the Sts’ailes Nation cultivated and nurtured plants for survival. Now researchers’ work about those forest gardens is being used to support a legal land claim by Canada’s Sts’ailes Nation against the province of British Columbia. by Worldcrunch May 22, 2024 Excerpt: "The people of the Sts’ailes Nation have lived for 3,000 years on the banks of the Harrison River in #BritishColumbia, its icy blue waters framed by mountains and fir trees. Evidence of their long presence on this land is visible in the remaining crabapple and nut trees that were once part of the nation’s forest gardens. What’s left today are some gnarled trees and overgrown bushes hidden among other old forest growth of pines and spruce. But these gardens were once full of plants carefully selected and nurtured to provide an important means of subsistence. Forest gardens were a method of agriculture in which practitioners cleared the land around or near villages, planted crops, and managed with agricultural methods like controlled burns and fertilization to increase the productivity of the plants. Traces of species like #PacificCrabapple, #BeakedHazelnut, #WildCherry, and others have been found in recent years — in some cases, still growing even more than a century after they were tended. They would have been selected for their nutritional value and, in some examples like the crabapple, long-term storage. For anthropologists, ethnologists, and other scientists, the existence of these gardens belies the long-held hunter-gatherer theory that maintained that the region’s #IndigenousPeoples didn’t change and nurture their lands. Instead, experts now believe this method of #agriculture and land manipulation helped communities like the Sts’ailes thrive. The traditional Sts’ailes territory of roughly 802,150 acres (324,620 hectares) — their current reserve is about 2,260 acres — was able to sustain its inhabitants through both good and difficult times because of its rich resources and the deep connection the community had to the land, said Kelsey Charlie Sr., who sits on the Sts’ailes Council, and whose traditional name is Teixweltel. The word lhemeqwatel, he said, 'means that you can get anything off of it, that it’s going to provide everything for you. And that includes those forest gardens and other cultivated things that they used for survival.' Legal land claim The land that was home to the Sts’ailes Nation is just one area where there is evidence that forest gardens were created and nurtured by communities of #FirstNations, the collective name given to most of Canada’s Indigenous peoples. While there is not a definitive catalog of the forest gardens, there are remains of them up and down the coast of British Columbia — some known, some still used by communities, some being rediscovered." Read more: https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/indigenous-forest-gardens-land-claim/ #SolarPunkSunday #LandBack #StsailesNation #FoodForests #FoodSecurity #CulturalPreservation #IndigenousGardening #IndigenousHistory