FOREST GARDENS (বন বাগান)

What is a forest garden?

Forest gardens are spaces thriving with life around human structures which are abundant with edible and native plants providing vegetables, herbs, spices, flowers and fruits with minimal intervention.  We believe in the phrase “home is where the heart is”. Everyone dreams of living in beautiful homes and we aim to make these gardens that not only produce food, but are aesthetically appealing as well. This beautiful, edible landscape will help the inhabitants to connect with their land and give them a sense of pride in having forest gardens around their home.

Why forest gardens?

Forest gardens are an effective tool for transformation. These spaces form the basic building blocks of our vision of regenerative, rural economies. For us forest gardens go beyond food, aiming to meet human needs of shelter, clothing, healing, learning, entertainment, color and ecology.

We envision to use our collective knowledge, skills, imagination and curiosity to build resilient tree-based perennial food production systems which are human centric to produce nutrient dense food and meet all human requirements while taking ecosystem services to foster a mutually beneficial relationship with other species and earth systems such that it successively generates more yields in a regenerative fashion and mitigates the challenges related to soil, water and air (aka ‘forest gardens’ in a technical sense).

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Impact of forest gardens

These forest gardens have the potential for addressing current and upcoming challenges of our time like-

 


Growing our own food not only ends hunger (SDG 2) but provides access to fresh, diverse and nutritious food year round.

 

Gardening work involves physical and mental activity in nature, promoting good health and well-being (SDG 3) while simultaneously producing human food.


Human-managed, local food production systems rich in biodiversity are resilient to changes in climate, ensuring food, nutritional and health security.


Growing one’s food also addresses issues of processed and packaged foods, plastic pollution, avoidable carbon footprints, hidden poisons like agro-chemicals and food additives, etc.


There is growing disconnect of today’s generation with our culture and nature.

Growing our food helps in reconnecting us with our ancestral roots and indigenous wisdom.


Meeting food needs locally reduces our dependence on high input food grown using monocultures, machines and agrochemicals in an extractive manner depleting biodiversity, soil fertility and water resources (both underground water and surface water reservoirs).


One third of food grown worldwide is wasted due to supermarkets, restaurants, consumers and linear supply chains. Growing food locally and eating consciously not only avoids wastage but reduces the pressure on land and natural resources used for human food production.


Famines and related starvation are due to human mis-management of resources rather than because of natural disasters as generally thought. Local food production systems, managed by communities are effective in mitigating these human-led situations.


It is often argued population boom is contributing to food insecurity heavily as the land is getting scarce for per capita food production. However, we will argue otherwise, i.e., it is not how many we are but what we do with our land which matters! From history till contemporary times, we find examples where humans have successfully tended their land while living nature producing abundance of food for everyone.


Forest gardens provide microclimate and refuge for local flora and fauna enabling ecosystem regeneration by successively giving more yields.
Along with edible plants, growing native species helps in meeting human needs of medicinal plants, timber and other building materials, fibers and bark, natural dyes and colors, materials for various arts and crafts, etc.


These forest gardens act as continuous spaces of learning enabling holistic development of kids and grown-ups alike.