A Forest Garden With 500 Edible Plants Could Lead to a Sustainable Future | Short Film Showcase

[Music] If you do nothing to a piece of land in tempered climates, it will become a forest. The forces of nature are actively moving the land towards a balanced, sustainable, and resilient ecosystem. This is called succession.

In southwest England, an unusual forest is growing. Nut trees, fruit trees, shrubs, and perennial vegetables are planted in a way that mimics a natural woodland. This forest garden is the life's work of Martin Crawford, an unconventional gardener who grows 500 edible plants with just a few hours of maintenance per month.

What we think of as normal in terms of food production is actually not normal at all. Annual plants are very rare in nature, and yet most of our agricultural fields are full of annual plants. It's not normal. What's normal is a more forested or semi-forested system.

Forest gardens in a temperate climate tend to have seven layers or so: high trees, smaller trees, shrubs, perennials, ground cover layers, root crops, and climbers. So, it includes directly useful plants—many types of fruit trees, both the common ones and much less common fruit trees; all the types of nuts; tuber crops; vegetables; medicinal plants; timber; but also logs that you might grow other things on, like mushrooms.

There are also plants of indirect use, system plants to help the system function better. That includes nitrogen-fixing plants, mineral accumulators, and plants to attract beneficial insects to eat all your pests. Forest gardens are very beautiful places to be in because, although they're managed, the management is light, so they have this very naturalistic feel to them.

It is more like being out in nature than being in a cultivated garden. It can seem a bit overwhelming; there are so many different species. You shouldn't let that stop you from beginning a project because you don't have to know everything to begin with. Just start, plant some trees, and go from there.

It's not the gradually increasing temperatures that damage plants; it's the increase in extreme events—big storms, big winds, very heavy rain, hail, droughts. By having a very diverse system, whatever happens to the weather, most of your crops will probably do fine. Some may fail; some may do better.

That's very important going into the future because we don't know exactly what's going to happen to our weather. So, by having a diverse system, it gives you maximum resilience. [Music] [Music] You