Food Forest Gardening

Dec 1-2, 2017

Leader: Richard Walker

Learn how to grow delicious, nutrient dense food using food forestry – the skill and art of growing food in a way that tries to replicate nature. We hope will join us for two days of in-depth learning with Richard Walker.

Topics will include: how to develop a perennial food forest garden on your large or small property, soil health, understanding site conditions, composting, water use, pruning and grafting, food plant species selection, herbs and medicinal plants, planting techniques, and propagation.

Richard is author of Food Forestry North of the 49th, the first book to focus on this approach in Canada.

Richard’s work spans forty plus years as a farmer, herbalist and food forester. He spent his early years as an organic farmer in Alberta where he and his parents grew specialty crops and practiced animal husbandry. In 1985 he moved to Grand Forks, British Columbia and, over the next twenty years, transformed a degraded three-acre property into the first food forest in Canada.

Now known as Filbelly Forest, this mix of fruit and nut trees and medicinal plants continues to serve as a cold-climate edible botanical repository of note. He is passionate and deeply informed about soil health and its link to nutritious, diverse food, human health and sound economics. Both optimist and pragmatist, he enjoys passing on the studied art and skill of forest gardening to those who strive for food stability.

Richard lives in Osoyoos, British Columbia where he grows an arid-zone food forest and continues to make herbal tinctures. His way of living underscores the joy of a simple and connected life and his food forests reflect this.