Forest Gardens

EcoSystems Design Inc. specializes in the design of edible landscapes and forest gardens.
Forest gardens are densely stacked polycultures of edible and useful species. Recognizing the productivity and stability of natural systems, forest gardeners work to re-create their structure and connections while selecting useful species that serve both our needs and those of the garden. Though a newly emerging concept in the west, traditional peoples have cultivated forest gardens for thousands of years in places including Ecuador, Sumatra, Mexico, India, Malaysia and Guatemala.
Forest gardens may consist of up to seven layers of plants: the canopy, mid-story, shrub, herb, ground cover, root and vertical layers. By developing these dense plantings it is possible to incorporate a great deal of diversity into a small area, while proportionally increasing yields. In addition to creating a diverse structure, forest gardens generally utilize a diverse plant palette that serves multiple functions. Nitrogen fixing plants are placed next to a fruit tree to provide it with a source of mulch and fertilizer - flowering plants below help to attract beneficial insects that keep pest populations under control.
Click here to visit our forest garden photo gallery
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Watch Danny Brown’s video Transforming a Weed Patch into a Forest Garden

Our forest gardens at the Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute (CRMPI) are some of the most mature in North America. Arranged along a south-facing slope at 7200 feet, these gardens have transformed the character of the landscape, forming a lush, vibrant jungle of growth that provides us with food, medicine and fodder. Stone terraces play a vital role in the development of these gardens. These terraces stabilize soil and mulch along slopes and create level areas for plant cultivation. The stones also create micro-climates that extend the growing season by providing a source of thermal mass, absorbing the sun’s heat during the day and radiating it at night. They provide habitat for garter snakes as well, who help to control slug and mice populations.
We maintain forest gardens without digging - we feed plants by feeding the life in the soil. Recognizing the amount of unnecessary labor that digging requires as well as its harmful effects on soil structure and microfauna populations, we instead choose to build soil by providing a continuous supply of organic matter. This organic matter, applied seasonally as mulch, provides weed suppression, moisture retention, erosion control and food for the micro-life found in the soil. By encouraging large worm populations, we help speed up the mulch’s decomposition while creating rich, fertile soil. In this way we are continually ‘feeding’ the soil as well as the life that resides there, so they may thrive along with our garden.

Tours of the CRMPI forest gardens and greenhouses can be scheduled by appointment by contacting Jerome Osentowski at (970) 927-4158 or jerome@crmpi.org.