Welcome to the Mediterranean Food Forest
Let’s Create Your Food Forest Together!
If you dream of high quality, nutrient dense, organic food that is so local – it’s within walking distance from your kitchen – then you’re in the right place!
We specialize in design of beautiful, edible, sustainable, tailored food forests – in hot, dry, mediterranean climate.
Whether you have a tiny urban garden, a larger suburban plot or a rural finca, we would love to design, implement and maintain your own Garden of Eden – a food forest that will meet and exceed your needs and dreams.
Let's Make Your Garden Beautiful, Edible and Sustainable!
Your Food Forest Will Grow Food All Year With Minimum Labor!
What we do
We help you transform your garden to a beautiful, edible, sustainable, tailored food forest.
How we do it
We design, implement and maintain your food forest... or teach you how to do it yourself.
Why we do it
We believe that you can easily create a happy, healthy, abundant and sustainable life while making the world a better place.
Our vision
Creating a better world by transforming mediterranean gardens into edible, abundant, sustainable food forests.
Why a Food Forest?
Food forest is the ultimate organic, edible, sustainable, no-maintenance garden.
Does a forest need tilling, weeding, fertilizers or irrigation?
Nope. And that’s what we’re going to create in your garden.
Not tilling preserves the natural soil structure, prevents loss of topsoil and allows all the tiny soil organisms to do their jobs – cycling nutrients and maintaining fertility.
Food forests continually enrich the soil with organic matter as leaves fall and plants die back for the winter so no chemical fertilizers are needed.
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 – highly sustainable – system.
As a result, food forests help restore land, biodiversity, and habitat while producing food. Lots of organic, nutrient-rich, healthy food.
The B.E.S.T. Principles of Design
BEAUTIFUL
We design your garden to be beautiful to all your senses.
Imagine your garden with abundance of colorful flowers and butterflies, water elements and wind chimes sounds, fragrant flowers and herbs, tasty fruits and vegetables and a million things to touch and feel.
EDIBLE
We call our gardens "food forests" for a reason.
We help you choose the best fruit trees (both local and exotics), vegetables (both annuals and perennials), nuts and herbs (and honey, if you want) to provide you with fresh, organic, abundant produce... all year long.
SUSTAINABLE
We use permaculture principles to create a completely organic,
ecologic, regenerative garden for you.
It is designed to work in co-creation with nature - requiring minimum labor, minimum water and no chemical fertilizers or pesticides EVER.
TAILORED
We design YOUR own Garden of Eden.
Our design follows your vision, your style, your taste.
We take your guidelines, wishes and dreams and design them into a unique, personal expression of who you are - providing you with what you need and want in your garden.
What You Can Expect
Start Your Own Food Forest Today
FREE Food Forest Tips
These Weekly Free Food Forest Tips, Tricks and Hacks will help you grow your own food and create a sustainable ecosystem that thrives with nature... even in hot, dry, mediterranean climate.
Even if you don’t own your land or have a lot of money!
ONLINE Course
The Food Forest course covers the basics of designing, planting, and maintaining an edible forest garden full of fruit and nut trees, perennial and annual vegetables, and flowers.
Including which plants to use, where to start, and what to expect as your food forest grows and evolves.
Mini DESIGN
This is the first phase of designing your own Garden of Eden.
We begin with an On-Site Consultation to observe your property and give you recommendations and resources to jump-start your own unique food forest.
Food Forest DESIGN
We make a second visit to share our DRAFT design concept based on our first Mini DESIGN visit.
Based on your feedback, we will complete the final design including a written report with recommended phases of implementation, plant lists and additional resources.
Let's Create Your Own Food Forest. Together!
Questions & Answers
What Makes a Food Forest?
A food forest, or edible forest garden, is a permanent, self-sustaining, food production ecosystem.
Food forest typically includes 7 layers: tall trees, low trees, shrubs, non woody plants, root vegetables, ground covers and vines.
Each layer provides a home and food for beneficial insects, animals, and bacteria that then provide food or services to the other layers.
Together, they produce a vibrant, productive, abundant and mostly self-maintaining ecosystem.
Are Food forests Always Organic?
There is no such thing as a food forest that uses chemical sprays or pest control methods.
Food forests depend on an active, diverse insect and animal population, which should keep pests under control.
Ground covers prevent weeds growing for the above-ground layers, trees and shrubs prevent compaction for the root layers, flowering plants provide food for pollinating insects, and other plants provide shelter for birds and insects that snack on pests.
Is a Food Forest a Vegetable Garden?
Not really. While a food forest contains vegetable plants, it is not a traditional vegetable garden.
Vegetable gardens are generally planted each spring and either mowed over or tilled under each fall/winter. The process repeats each growing season.
While a vegetable garden technically contains fruits, like tomatoes, cucumbers, and watermelons, it does not include established fruits and nuts like apple trees, walnut trees, or blueberries. These are all permanent plants outside the scope of an annual vegetable garden.
Is My Backyard Right for a Food Forest?
Most backyards are suitable for some kind of food forest, although it may not work for all the foods you want to grow.
Walnut trees, for example, take 10-13 years to mature and produce nuts. They will reach up to 45 meter (150 feet) tall over their lifetime. This tree produces a lot of shade, so unless you have a large backyard, this is not a sustainable option.
Before you install a food forest, plan out what kind of foods you would like to produce. Expand beyond typical fruits and vegetables; look into fruit trees, nut trees, edible vines, and groundcovers.
If you have a small backyard, you may want to look into vertical growing options. Pergola with vines, larger containers with multiple plantings, and hanging planters can provide a miniature food forest setting.
Why perennials?
Perennials are plants that live for more than a year.
One of the most important principles of sustainable agriculture is total coverage of the soil, all the time, with plants or at the very least mulch.
Perennial plants are more sustainable, as they provide a permanent ground cover protecting your precious soil from drying out and erosion.
Why diversity?
Biodiverse systems are resilient systems, less prone to disease and pest attack, and better equipped to make optimal use of light, water and nutrients.
You also get a variety of harvests spread throughout the seasons, and a beautiful, interesting garden, full of wildlife.
This is exactly what you want your own food forest to be like.
To achieve a low maintenance abundance of fruit, nuts, berries and herbs you’ll want to create a forest-like system.
Where fertility comes from many sources, where fungi helps create organic material, where wildlife is your primary pest control, where soil holds water like a sponge, and where you have a high diversity of plants.
Let's Bring Your Vision Into Life
Before you can begin the process of designing your ideal food forest, you need to become crystal clear about your vision, your wishes and the purpose of your edible garden forest.