food forests: a healthy alternative to xeriscaping

Thursday, January 26th | Our Lady of the Snows | 6 PM | Free

Food forests are the ultimate organic garden. The goal of a food forest is to eliminate the need for tilling, weeding, fertilizer, and irrigation.

Key Learning Points

1. Water Conservation with Food Forests  

2. Carbon Sequestration with Fruit Trees and Perennial Plants 

3. How to design and plant your own Food Forest 

Because food forests are mostly perennial crops, there’s no need to till. Not tilling preserves the natural soil structure, preventing the loss of topsoil and allowing all the little microbes and soil critters to do their jobs - cycling nutrients and maintaining fertility. The deep roots of trees and shrubs make them much more drought tolerant than annual vegetables, and they shade the smaller plants below, keeping everything lush and moist in a self-maintaining, sustainable system.

Brett is a biogeographer, entrepreneur & eco-agriculture practitioner. For the last 20+ years he’s been creating technology to quantify environmental change and use the insights he gained to develop integrated solutions to pollution. This journey has put Brett in a unique position to analyze climate change and potential solutions to mitigate its effects. Since the early days of his career, agriculture has been considered one of the biggest culprits of environmental degradation. After putting the problems associated with agriculture under a microscope, it became clear to him that a concept called Regenerative Agriculture has the greatest potential to mitigate the effects of climate change and provide sustainable nutrient dense food. Instead of fighting Mother Nature’s design with synthetic fertilizers and chemical warfare, the key is to work with her design and not against it.  Brett’s focus is to convert lawns to the concept of a Food Forest by adding biodiversity to the landscape.