From the field: Plants enjoy good company

Plants, like most people, enjoy good company. Everywhere in the wild they can be caught gathering and mingling about together, and on our farm it’s no different. This wild approach to farming is based in biomicry, and is wholly dependent upon strategic collaboration with the plant world.

Here, a hazelnut, currant shrub, comfrey, and monarda, convene together in a small snapshot of the sub-shrub layer of the south field forest garden. Not only does this dynamic interplay create beneficial interaction and diverse soil coverage (allowing us to forgo irrigation for the last six years), there are also multi species yields available where there would otherwise be mowed or bare ground around a hazelnut plant.