Winona LaDuke on Redemption

Winona LaDuke on Redemption

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Posted 26 September 2011, by Sacred Land Film Project, Vimeo, vimeo.com

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Winona LaDuke on Redemption from Sacred Land Film Project on Vimeo.

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Winona LaDuke (Anishinaabe activist) speaks on the process of apology, redemption and healing; through the story of the Pawnee tribe and their return home to their native land in Nebraska.

This interview bite was conducted as part of our Sacred Land Film Project series, featuring indigenous communities fighting to save their sacred sites.

Learn more at sacredland.org

Credits

• Sacred Land Film Project

 Tags

• Winona LaDuke
• Anishinaabe
• Native American
• Ralph Nader
• American Indian
• Sacred Site
• Redemption
• Honor the Earth
• Environmental Activism
• Global Warming
• Sacred Land Film Project
• Toby McLeod
• Pawnee
• White Earth Reservation
• Anishinaabeg

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http://vimeo.com/29633865

EcoSikh presents on Sikh Women and Biodiversity at SAFAR Conference, Toronto

 

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Posted 26 September 2011, by Staff, EcoSikh, ecosikh.org

 

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EcoSikh has been invited to make a presentation on Sikh Women and Biodiversity at a key academic conference on Sikhism and Gender at the University of Toronto on October 1, 2011.

The SAFAR: Our Journeys conference will feature over 30 speakers including Sikh feminist scholars, theologians and leaders, including keynote speaker Nikky-Guninder Kaur author of The Birth of the Khalsa: A Feminist Re-Memory of Sikh Identity.

Bandana Kaur of EcoSikh will be presenting a paper on Sikh women and biodiversity conservation in Punjab, the birthplace of the Sikh religion.

In her paper, titled “Women Farmers of Punjab: Forgotten Voices from the Plains”, Bandana will examine the Green Revolution from the perspective of Sikh women living in the Malwa region of Punjab, an area recognized for the challenges posed to the farming community. Her paper examines the historical relationship between women and agricultural biodiversity in Punjab, and contemporary efforts by rural Sikh women to revive agricultural biodiversity today.

“Sikh women engaged in agricultural biodiversity conservation can help inform a new approach to agricultural development in Punjab that recognizes complex and interrelated systems in: the content and diversity of what is produced, the inputs both human and technical used to produce these goods, and the knowledge systems upon which choices are based.”

A special issue of the academic journal Sikh Feminist Review will be devoted to the conference proceedings. This public record of Sikh feminist research will serve as one of the first accessible domains to privilege Sikh feminist scholarship.

 

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http://www.ecosikh.org/ecosikh-presents-on-sikh-women-and-biodiversity-at-safar-conference-toronto/

Eco-Terrorism

 

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Posted 27 September 2011, by Kaif, Gale Force Kaif, galeforcekaif.blogspot.com

 

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This is what eco-terrorism really looks like:

Please steal this picture and share it.  🙂

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http://galeforcekaif.blogspot.com/2011/09/eco-terrorism.html

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Prairiewoods celebrating 15 years as ecospirituality oasis

Prairiewoods celebrating 15 years as ecospirituality oasis

The labyrinth at Prairiewoods Franciscan Spirituality Center, 120 E. Boyson Rd., Hiawatha, Iowa. Taken Friday, Sept. 16, 2011. (Angela Holmes/SourceMedia Group)

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Posted 24 September 2011, by Cindy Hadish, Eastern Iowa Life (SourceMedia Group), easterniowalife.com

 

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The Gazette

HIAWATHA — With more than 40 years in the making, Prairiewoods Franciscan Spirituality Center will celebrate its 15th anniversary with a nature festival.

After purchasing farmland in 1962 as a potential site for a regional headquarters, the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, based in La Crosse, Wis., had numerous offers to buy the land on the Cedar Rapids/Hiawatha border.

“The sisters could have made millions,” says Prairiewoods Director Barry Donaghue of the Congregation of Christian Brothers. “But they said, ‘Let’s see if we can make it an oasis. Let’s take care of it.’”

Betty Daugherty, a Franciscan nun and one of six founding members of Prairiewoods, initiated weekly committee meetings to determine the future of the site.

Betty Daugherty

“It was a gradual process,” says Daugherty, who still resides at the center at 120 E. Boyson Road in Hiawatha.

Joann Gehling, another Franciscan nun and founding member, says planning began in earnest in 1994, once the philosophy was determined to combine ecology and spirituality into what would become known as an ecospirituality center.

Gehling, who lives near the center, says other religious communities had similar undertakings elsewhere in the country, but nothing like Prairiewoods existed in Iowa.

Joann Gehling

Their vision, based on the Franciscan philosophy of God revealed in the natural world, included restoration of the prairie and ecological practices, such as the use of natural materials and renewable energy in the buildings.

Doors of the center opened in 1996.

With 30 acres of tallgrass prairie and 40 acres of oak woodlands, the site offers the oasis that the sisters envisioned.

Picnickers and hikers walk the center’s woodland trails. Business workers find respite at retreats in the center’s main building, which sports meeting rooms, a fully-staffed kitchen and meditation room with inspiring view of the woods. Meals, cooked to perfection by chef Jill Jones, use produce grown on-site and other local foods.

One hundred solar panels generate 22,500-kilowatt hours of electricity annually and classes use a new building as a solar training facility.

Barry Donaghue

Artists and writers find solitude in Prairiewoods’ two hermitages. A 19-room guesthouse also provides overnight accommodations.

People of all backgrounds and faiths use an outdoor labyrinth and traditional sweat lodge.

As Donaghue describes it, the center isn’t focused on Catholicism or any particular religion.

“We don’t proselytize,” says Donaghue, who has studied and ministered in Australia, England, Ireland, France, Israel and the Fiji Islands. “Basically, we’re trying to get people to think.”

With that in mind, Prairiewoods is home base for groups such as Wednesday Women, who meet 10-11:30 a.m. Wednesdays to explore topics related to spiritual growth, and Green Living Group, which meets 6:30-8 p.m. the third Wednesday of every month to discuss subjects such as voluntary simplicity.

Holistic treatments, including massage and reflexology, are scheduled by appointment.

Prairiewoods also offers retreats and events, including Nature Fest, scheduled for 1-4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 2, to celebrate the center’s 15th anniversary.

The celebration features music, games, blessing of animals, an ice cream social and environmental art and poetry from Iowa winners of the 2011 River of Words.

In a column Daugherty wrote about exploring ecospirituality, she notes that “eco” comes from oikos, a Greek word for “home.”

“Hence, ecospirituality is not about a relationship with a God in a far-away heaven,” she writes. “The Divine can be found in our daily lives, in our human relationships and in our relationship with Earth.”

 

FYI

 

What: Nature Fest at Prairiewoods

Where: 120 E. Boyson Rd., Hiawatha

When: 1-4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 2

Other: Event features live music by Deep Dish Divas and Bob Ballantyne; games, nature tours and outdoor activities. Ice cream social begins at 1:45 p.m.; message from Sen. Rob Hogg and storytelling at 2 p.m.; blessing of animals at 2:45 p.m. and more.

The event includes the only Eastern Iowa showing of winners of River of Words, an environmental art and poetry competition for youths ages 5 to 19.

More information: www.prairiewoods.org

A deer roams the woods at Prairiewoods Franciscan Spirituality Center, 120 E. Boyson Rd., Hiawatha, Iowa. Taken Friday, Sept. 16, 2011. (Angela Holmes/SourceMedia Group)

Related

• August 31, 2011
  Homegrown: September 2011 calendar
• July 31, 2011
  Homegrown: August 2011 Calendar

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http://easterniowalife.com/2011/09/24/prairiewoods-celebrating-15-years-as-ecospirituality-oasis/

 

Maine Gardener: Ferry Beach students elevate garden to a sustainable ecosystem

 

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Posted 25 September 2011, by Tom Atwell, Maine Sunday Telegram (MaineToday Media Inc.), pressherald.com

 

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The Ferry Beach Ecology School in Saco has given a new name to its organic garden.

“We are calling it a ‘sustainable food ecosystem,’ ” said John Ibsen, coordinator of the school’s Food for Thought program. “This garden is our feeble attempt to replicate a natural ecosystem.”

Ibsen showed a bit of a twinkle when he mentioned the new name, but it fits with the school’s goals.

“Our focus is on the science of ecology,” said executive director Drew Dumsch, “and the practice of sustainability. It is sustainability applied to ecology.”

Founded in 1999, Ferry Beach Ecology School hosts students from other schools for as little as an afternoon or as long as a week, taking advantage of the seven natural ecosystems within walking distance of the school and teaching about nature and ecology. It’s located at a Unitarian summer camp that was established in 1901, and uses the buildings when the camp isn’t. So far, 80,000 students have taken part in the program.

The garden is located on a challenging site that was built on beach sand on secondary dunes and buffeted by ocean winds. But the students and staff have slowed the winds by creating woven fences from trees cut down for projects elsewhere on the property.

The soil is improved by a no-till method of lasagna gardening, where layers of organic matter and newspapers are put down and allowed to decompose to create a rich topsoil.

“We teach that it takes 5,000 years in nature to create an inch of topsoil, but we can make it a lot faster,” Dumsch said.

Ibsen stresses putting plants close together, having mulch and compost on the soil and gardening vertically, to make the most of a garden that is about the size of a small house lot.

“Bare soil is like an open wound, letting out soil moisture and soil fertility,” Ibsen said.

He combines the permaculture and American Indian practice of the three sisters with a crop rotation in several plots in the garden. The three sisters are corn, squash and beans. The corn provides structure for the beans to climb, the beans provide nitrogen to the soil for the other two plants, and the squash shades the soil to keep weeds to a minimum.

The planting pattern is more like a forest, Ibsen said, where there is a mixture of plants rather than the distinct rows of a traditional vegetable garden.

After the squash is harvested in October, Ibsen has the students plant garlic, which is supposed to cleanse the soil. This year, he planted some summer squash around the garlic a few weeks before the garlic harvest to make more use of the soil.

Next year, that plot will be planted with peas, rye and vetch, all of which improve the soil.

In another area, Ibsen uses more combination planting with an apple tree as a centerpiece. Rhubarb will improve the soil. Fennel is believed to repel a lot of apple-tree pests. And bee balm will attract a lot of pollinators.

Ibsen was especially proud of a tomato cage that was about 7 feet tall and 6 feet long, made entirely from items taken from a Dumpster at a school construction project.

The wood for the frame came from discarded pallets. The tomatoes climb metal reinforcing grids that usually go into a concrete floor.

All of this is put together in a package that will please older elementary and middle-school students. There are wanted posters for some of the bad bugs, such as Japanese beetles and tomato hornworms.

The little red garden shed has snacks from the garden as well as tools. The woven fences are both whimsical and practical. The mammoth sunflowers are about 8 feet tall with foot-wide seed heads.

Although the garden provides only a small percentage of the food served at the school, the dining hall is used as a teaching tool.

“With the kind of teaching we do here, we didn’t want the cafeteria food to be from Sysco,” Dumsch said.

It costs the school about an extra $30,000 a year to get organic and local food, he said, but donations help pay for it.

One of the major fundraisers for the school will be Eco Appetito, to be held from noon to 3 p.m. Oct. 2 at Cinque Terre, 36 Wharf St. in Portland.

Chef Lee Skawinski and his staff will be preparing locally sourced food, wine and beer. There also will be live entertainment, door prizes and a silent auction. Tickets are $40.

Tom Atwell can be contacted at 791-6362 or at:

tatwell@pressherald.com

 

Most Read:

• Sprouting up all over
• In tune and in tempo
• Maine Gardener: Ferry Beach students elevate garden to a sustainable ecosystem
• Maine Gardener: The naked truth: A bare garden isn’t pretty, but you can fix that

 

 

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http://www.pressherald.com/life/homeandgarden/ferry-beach-students-elevate-garden-to-a-sustainable-ecosystem_2011-09-25.html

How To Take Out 15 Wolves With One Shot

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Posted18 September 2011, by Tom Remington, Black Bear Blog (Skinny Moose), skinnymoose.com/bbb/

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*Scroll for an Update*

WARNING: This image may cause idolizers of wolves to suddenly hemorrhage and shake uncontrollably.

You must click on the image to enlarge in order to fully understand the post’s title.

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*Update* Sept. 19, 2011, 8:25 a.m.

I would like to take a minute to explain why I posted this photograph and what led up to the posting of it. First let me say that I have absolutely no idea who took this photograph or where it was taken. I did not take this photograph. It was sent to me in my email and by judging from the number of emails, most of which I did not recognize, the photo had been around a time or two.

Personally, I thought the picture was disgusting, unnecessary and yes, over the top. But it got me thinking. As I wrote in a comment after the posting, after quite some deliberate self debate, I decided to post it mostly for the reasons I listed, the main one being that over the years that I have been doing this there has never been any outrage from readers when I posted disgusting, unnecessary and over the top photos of other animals that have been disemboweled, dismembered and/or eaten alive by large predators. And yes, never any outrage over when hunters, hikers and joggers get attacked and sometimes killed by other animals. Pity and sorrow maybe, but outrage? Never.

I provided a link to just one other story that very closely resembled this one. There was no outrage. I was not threatened with my life. None of that. Both photos were “posed” by the person who took the pictures and yet there is only outrage over this canine. Why is that?

I proved the point of why I posted the photo. Was it the best choice I’ve ever made? Probably not but I do not apologize for it. If nothing else, rational people can leave from here asking themselves why there is a difference and if you can answer that question, you will be one step closer to understanding why there is a war going on that many call the wolf wars.

On an aside: One reader commented that the photo was of a coyote. There is only one way anyone can know whether this animal is a wolf, coyote or some hybridized canine is to have information about the photo none of the rest of us do.

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Related Posts

• Wolves Chase and Corner Elk
• Attacking Coyote Shot And Killed
• Elk Kills By Wolves In North Idaho
• Wolves In Korea Killed 113 People And 2,000 Animals
• Wolf Shot In Missouri – Jim Beers Rebuts Newspaper Account

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http://www.skinnymoose.com/bbb/2011/09/18/how-to-take-out-15-wolves-with-one-shot/

Cree George Poitras: Ottawa Tarsands Action Monday

OTTAWA TARSANDS ACTION – Why am I attending?

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Posted 24 September 2011, by George Poitras, Censored News, bsnorrell.blogspot.com

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George Poitras is a former Chief, Mikisew Cree First Nation

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George Poitras

In the past year and even more so in the past few weeks a lot of debate has focused on the tarsands in northeastern Alberta as “ethical oil.” Advertisements taken out on the Oprah Winfrey Network by EthicalOil.org, why Oprah Winfrey has endorsed this propaganda by big oil is anyone’s guess?! The advertisement suggests why should America be dependent on Saudi Arabian oil, “a state that doesn’t allow women to drive, doesn’t allow them to leave their homes or work without their male guardian’s permission.” That there is a better alternative, “Ethical oil from Canada’s oil sands.” Apparently meaning a more human alternative.

Names synonymous of this “ethical oil” notion include Alykhan Velshi, Ezra Levant. Proponents who happily began to espouse the controversial two words include Canadian politicians like environment minister Peter Kent and prime minister Stephen Harper as they traverse the globe promoting investment in the tarsands.

The tarsands have been mined, primarily open-pit, for the past 40 years in what is known as the traditional lands of many Treaty 6 and Treaty 8 First Nations. The total tarsands deposit, the size of England, is known to be the second largest oil deposit in the world, second to Saudi Arabia. Only 3% of the total deposit has been mined in the past 40 years and Dr. David Schindler, a world renowned water expert, proved last year that there has been virtually no monitoring of what has also been characterized the largest industrial project in the world. A claim that the local Indigenous peoples have made for decades with proof of deformed fish, observation of poor water quality, receding water levels, impacts to animal health, and more recently in Fort Chipewyan, an increase in rare and aggressive cancers.

Tarsands a humane alternative?

When local physician Dr. John O’Connor raised concerns of disproportionate numbers of unusual cancers in Fort Chipewyan in 2006, the government of Canada, or physicians from the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch lodged complaints against him including a charge of “causing undue alarm” to residents of my community of Fort Chipewyan. Canada’s charges against a family physician has never before been heard of in the history of Canada. For my community of Fort Chipewyan, this unprecedented action by the government of Canada essentially signaled to us that Canada didn’t care what claims Dr. O’Connor was making or that people in Fort Chipewyan might be living in a situation with an epidemic of rare and aggressive cancers. The claims were eventually proven by an Alberta Cancer Board Study in 2009 because of our unrelenting efforts; perhaps we shamed the Canadian and Alberta governments into doing so by successfully making our concerns a part of the international debate of this “dirty oil” campaign and not because the governments felt it was the “ethical” or “humane” thing to do.

Despite this, both the Alberta and Canadian governments continue to this day, to deny there is any concern with cancers in Fort Chipewyan.

The governments of Alberta and Canada have for the past 15 years relied on the Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program (RAMP) to monitor the Athabasca River and the fish health. Every study since then has concluded that there was little to no impacts from tarsands development on the water or the fish health. A position that was proven wrong by Dr. David Schindler. Essentially, the RAMP which is 100% funded by the oil companies and who’s data is proprietary, and the Alberta and Canadian governments have been lying to the downstream impacted communities but also to Albertans and Canadians. They both shamefully admitted this following Schindler’s study just days before Christmas in 2010.

Fishermen in Fort Chipewyan have been saving deformed, tumoured, discoloured, and other problem fish for many years. Many residents in my community have chosen not to eat any fish from the Athabasca River or Lake Athabasca, a sad commentary to impacts on a peoples way of living. In June 1970, a Suncor pipeline break spilled 19,123 barrels of oil, roughly 3 million liters, into the Athabasca River which reached Lake Athabasca. This shut down the fishing industry on Lake Athabasca for two consecutive years. The fishermen held a press conference in October 2010 in Edmonton, Alberta displaying many of the collection of problem fish. This generated further international attention to the tarsands industry and its impacts to water and fish health.

Indigenous leaders in the downstream community of Fort Chipewyan have been chastised by oil company executives when they speak publicly to the press about their concerns of impacts from tarsands. They have gone so far as threatening, that should the Indigenous leaders continue, there would be repercussions to their First Nation-owned company’s contracts within certain oil company sites. Oil company executives regularly question the Indigenous leaders when their own community members speak out publicly on issues and I have seen those members silenced.

Two years ago I attended a protest in Trafalgar Square in London, England. We drew a crowd of about 500 supporters and this protest generated so much publicity internationally by England’s BBC and Canada’s CBC who were present and did live interviews. Three weeks after this action which I dubbed the “bloody oil tour” an executive from a major oil company flew to my community to meet with my Chief & Council and in no uncertain terms stated that they didn’t like that I traveled internationally and generated so much negative publicity on the tarsands industry. They also stated that they knew of all my actions in the past years because they said they had a binder “this thick” to prove it. He further suggested that somehow I should be “silenced” or even “terminated” or there would be repercussions. Two weeks later, the First Nation-owned company contracts worth millions were terminated displacing approximately 65 employees. I chose to leave my employment shortly thereafter.

An ethical, humane future for impacted communities?

In a recent trip to the Amazon and in conversation with a colleague from Nigeria, I told him many of our issues, our concerns, the repercussions we receive for being vocal. He was in complete disbelief. He said in a million years he would not believe all of this would occur in Canada, a developed G8 country. He said Canada is known as a safe country for its citizens. Canada is known as a country that prides itself for protection of human rights within its own borders and beyond.

I also tell my fellow leaders in Fort Chipewyan and to those young, brave members of my community, that the repercussions for speaking publicly is nothing compared to what we will see in the future. That if only 3% of the total deposit has been mined and the environmental impacts are so significant, that there will be many more generations of our people who will take up this challenge and they will face much more backlash than what we are seeing today from what has become a ruthless and aggressive race to exploit the tarsands. That many of our people will continue to see the early demise of their lives from rare and aggressive cancers the same way we watched our youngest victim at the age of 28 succumb to his cancer just months after being diagnosed. That if we see our environment in such a negative state today, do we think that we are capable of handing down to future generations a healthy environment? That if Canada and Alberta today ignore and repeatedly, knowingly infringe on our Constitutionally protected Treaty Rights, will our future generations be able to meaningfully exercise their right to hunt, fish and trap? Will our people in 20 years from now be able to enjoy a traditional diet of fish, moose, ducks, geese, caribou?

While I do not condone any ill-treatment on women in Saudi Arabia, Indigenous peoples in Canada’s tarsands should not be a pawn or be sacrificed to allow certainty for Canada, Alberta and multinational corporations to exploit the tarsands at all costs! From an Indigenous perspective, watching and being victim to the 40 years of unrelenting, unfettered, unmonitored development of the tarsands, there is nothing “ethical” or “humane” about the development of the tarsands!

I will be in Ottawa on Monday, September 26th to oppose the approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline because an approval means an expansion of production of tarsands by a million barrels a day, further exacerbating local Indigenous peoples grave concerns about the development of the tarsands.

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http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2011/09/cree-george-poitras-ottawa-tarsands.html

Glendon Links Religion, Legal Rights

 

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Posted 23 September 2011, by Amanda Serfozo, The Emory Wheel (Emory University), emorywheel.com

 

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Mary Ann Glendon, Learned Hand professor of law at Harvard University and former U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican, discussed the relationship between modern ethics, religious leadership and legal rights at the Emory School of Law on Tuesday.

The lecture was part of a 2011-2012 series titled, “When Law and Religion Meet,” a symposium featuring scholars with an interest in the fields of both law and theology. Emory Law will host speakers who will comment on topics such as genetic cloning, Islamic family law and marriage throughout the year.

Glendon has served many diplomatic and theological roles, most notably as the head of the Vatican delegation to the U.N. Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 and as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics during the Bush Administration. She was also the first woman to be named president of the Pope’s committee of social scientists and Catholic researchers.

“The Supreme Court of the United States has maintained a stronghold that religion is a private affair; that individual standing alone cannot maintain conditions for free practice,” Glendon noted during her opening remarks. “Freedom of religion needs free speech and supporting entities like a free press and free enterprise in order to thrive.”

At the spring meeting of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, where the Pope met with leading Catholic thinkers, Glendon learned about the status of religion worldwide. Glendon noted that acceptance of all religions at the social and governmental levels is critical to a healthy, democratic society.

“To ignore the social makeup of religion is to ignore the implications for our own form of government, as they are undoubtedly tied,” she noted. “If there is government cooperation, there is religious cooperation.”

In her lecture, Glendon discussed how the U.S. government decides the ways in which religion is financed and how the Catholic church supports its religious freedoms.

“We are lucky to be in the United States,” she acknowledged. “No one is killing us for our beliefs.”

Glendon explained her work at the Becket Fund, a legal enterprise that works to represent those who have been restricted for practicing their beliefs, and its ongoing attempts to allow for open religious practices across every denomination.

She also answered questions from an audience comprised primarily of theology students and religious leaders from the Atlanta community, often agreeing with their proposals for creating a more tolerant state. Glendon inquired whether American education systems should teach about the commonalities of religion rather than the differences of each.

“Americans love individuality over equality, but we are proud of unity in diversity,” she said. “I agree with you, that we should be relating rather than marginalizing.”

Defining terms such as “moral ecology,” or the idea that religion is a source of social division and “profound paradox,” Glendon said a long-standing religious elitism among social groups is trickling down to the masses. She also noted that the political costs of neglecting religion could mean lesser forms of compassion, community involvement and declines in service-oriented action.

Ultimately, she advocated for the free expression of every religion and government tolerance for all.

“There can be a pluralism of various forms of religious freedom,” she said. “Guarantees regarding freedom of and from religion, only work in a society of tolerance. There is no prohibition or requirement to practice a religion, and this is not a denigration or advance of either.”

Religious leaders, according to Glendon, also serve an important function in democracies with a tolerant philosophy, particularly when it comes to working where government is legally confined.

“This is where our true responsibility lies,” she said. “What hangs in the balance is whether religion could help to hold together individual freedom and our American community.”

Glendon gave her discussion in memory of Western legal scholar and long-time Emory Law faculty Harold J. Berman. The Emory University Center for the Study of Law and Religion sponsored the event.

— Contact Amanda Serfozo.

 

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http://www.emorywheel.com/detail.php?n=30108

Amanda Serfozo

Forest gardens: Trunk call

They are the latest horticultural must-haves. But how to get one? Anna Pavord drops in on an expert

Martin Crawford in front of his Szechuan pepper tree at the Agroforestry Research Trust. Click the image to be taken to a photo gallery associated with this article.

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Posted 24 September 2011, by Mark Passmore, The Independent, independent.co.uk

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The forest garden is an attractive prospect, an edible landscape where the gardener can roam, collecting spiritual refreshment along with dinner. Those two strands were equally important to Robert Hart, whose smallholding at Wenlock Edge in Shropshire became a place of pilgrimage for his disciples. His book Forest Gardening (1996), written four years before he died, explored different and more holistic methods of producing crops. Why labour at digging the earth, planting fresh seed each year, when you could copy nature’s way of providing a harvest?

Working in his own orchard, Hart developed a forest-garden model built up from seven different layers of planting. At the top is the canopy provided by mature fruit trees and under that a lower layer of smaller fruit and nut trees. Shrubs such as currants make up a third layer, with a herbaceous layer of perennial vegetables under that. Any remaining bare earth is covered with horizontal mats of herbs, or sprawling crops such as cranberry (if the soil is sufficiently acid). Hart built into his system an underground dimension of edible tubers and rhizomes and a final flurry of vines and other climbers that could pull their way up into the trees. It’s the kind of mix you find in many English woodlands, though the plants there will not necessarily be edible.

Now, if you want to learn about the forest garden, your pilgrimage will take you west, to Martin Crawford and the Agroforestry Research Trust, based in a two-acre plot at Dartington in Devon. In fact, Crawford has plots scattered in several places round here, because he can scarcely keep up with demand for the plants he grows and the courses he runs each year. What is the draw, I asked, as we cowered in a polytunnel, waiting for the worst of the rain to pass. “A bit of it is the back-to-nature stuff,” he replied. “And a lot of people now lead very busy lives. They think of the forest garden as a low input system.”

Which it is. But only up to a point. “There’s no such thing as a do-nothing garden,” says Crawford robustly. “You can’t just plant up a forest garden and walk away.” Shelter is critically important, particularly if you aim to grow the more unusual plants that for some devotees is the whole point of the forest garden: blue honeysuckle, Szechuan pepper, tuberous nasturtium, plum yew. Most new converts want to get straight on with planting their crops. But, says Crawford, the shelter belt must come first.

Hart made his forest garden within an already established orchard. Crawford thinks it’s simpler to begin with open ground, as he did at Dartington where he took over a piece of unused pasture. Getting the trees in is the easy bit, he says. It’s the underlayers that need some thought. He used thick plastic sheets (Terram) to kill off the grass between the trees, gradually planting up one area at a time. Shade lovers will be more at home than plants that need sun. In Crawford’s plot, apple mint romps away very successfully in what Hart might have called the fifth dimension, with Solomon’s seal spearing up between.

I’ve never eaten Solomon’s seal, but Crawford says the young shoots are excellent, gathered and cooked like asparagus. I’ve never eaten lime leaves either, but Crawford coppices his limes hard to get plenty of young growth and uses the leaves in salads. It’s one of his best crops, he says, though it’d be a brave greengrocer who tried to sell them. Raspberries are a great success, because they can wander where they want, rather than being constrained to grow in the strip of ground to which we gardeners usually confine them. Crawford’s canes were enormous. And his Solomon’s seal hadn’t been stripped by caterpillars, as mine always are.

Diversity, said Crawford. That’s the secret. He reckons he’s got at least 500 different kinds of plant growing in his Dartington plot. And because one plant muddles into the next in an amiable way, it’s not so obvious which is what to a pest such as the Solomon’s seal sawfly (Phymatocera aterrima). But if self-sufficiency is your aim, you’d be hard-pressed, even with these 500 plants, to feed yourself adequately. Hart was a vegan and lived mostly on raw food. But on a cold winter’s evening, I’d be looking for something a little more comforting.

And a forest garden can’t provide much carbohydrate, apart from sweet chestnuts which make a superb flour. I always buy it when we go to see my brother in France as, over here, it’s absurdly expensive (£6.99 for 500g). Crawford mills his own which he gathers from the trees he planted when he first took on this plot, 20 years ago. This year there’s a heavy crop and the squirrels leave them alone because they don’t like the prickles.

Hart saw the sustainable forest garden as the ideal way to transform city wastelands, reconnecting the urban with the natural. Would I plant a forest garden, if I were starting afresh in our plot? No, but that’s chiefly because I live surrounded by the spiritual refreshment of the real thing. There are hazelnuts in every hedgerow. Sweet chestnuts, too. Sloes and bullaces are abundant; so are elders and nettles and we use them all. This year, there’s been an astonishing crop of parasol mushrooms in the fields around. And the irony is that, while people queue up to learn about the forest garden, I’ve not seen a single person out brambling, though luscious blackberries are bursting out all over.

Agroforestry Research Trust, 46 Hunters Moon, Dartington, Totnes, Devon TQ9 6JT. Send 4 x 1st class stamps (or visit agroforestry.co.uk) for a copy of Martin Crawford’s excellent catalogue of fruit and nut trees as well as unusual vegetables and spices. Weekend (non-residential) courses in forest gardening cost £160. 2012 dates will be announced on the website. Meanwhile you can subscribe to ‘Agroforestry News’ for £21 a year (4 issues). Look out for Martin Crawford’s book ‘Unusual Vegetables’, to be published next spring by Green Books (£14.95)

Five fabulous plants for a forest garden

Szechuan pepper (Zanthoxylum schinifolium) An intensely aromatic small tree or large shrub growing to 3m (10ft) with bunches of small, hard, red fruit that provide the pepper. The leaves can be used as flavouring. Hardy to -20C. £8.

Mashua (Tropaeolum tuberosum) A scrambling plant with very pretty, slightly glaucous leaves, peppery in taste like the garden nasturtium. Grown for its tubers, a staple in the Andes, unstarchy but nutritious. Two tubers for £4.

Turkish rocket (Bunias orientalis) A deep-rooted perennial brassica that comes into growth early in the year. Cook young new leaves like cabbage and the flowerheads – they come later – like broccoli. They have a mustardy flavour. £6.

Umbrella pine (Pinus pinea) All pines produce pine nuts but some are easier to get at than others. This is the best species to plant for nuts, eventually growing to 15m (50ft). £12.

Chinese mountain yam (Dioscorea batatas) The Crawford children’s favourite vegetable, the yams produced like little potatoes all the way up a twining stem that can get to 3-4m. They do best in fertile soil. £5.

 

Also in this section

• Weekend Work: Take cuttings from tender perrennials
• In it for the long run: Summer’s fading, but your blooms don’t have to
• Scents and sensibility: How to make the most of scented-leaved pelargoniums
• Weekend Work: Time to start preparing sites for new lawns

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http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/house-and-home/gardening/forest-gardens-trunk-call-2359124.html