A short post about a topic close to my heart, since I’m lucky enough to own a garden.

Followers of this blog and art collectors (recently my AI art experiments + poster art using Midjourney etc.) may have noticed a big influence still runs through it – i.e. nature, tree art, fantasy nature – and – permaculture, agroforestry, syntropic agroforestry…

These latter buzzwords simply refer to techniques for a way of thinking about gardening, farming etc. that attempts to work more in harmony with nature when it comes to producing food, focussing more on protecting soil, increasing biodiversity and also what’s going on beneath the soil, (in terms of what plants grow well together and at different levels of the system).

There are ancient techniques which have been used across countries like coppicing, pollarding, interplanting, companion planting (eg. the 3 sisters), hedge-laying… However, it’s really about realising these are part of this bigger perspective, (and can even be scaled up). They work with further techniques of creating ‘consortiums’ of plants and trees, fixing nitrogen or for chop and drop and allowing for diversity to create a robust – productive – fruit forest through our interventions.

Anyway, here’s a very good, inspiring video from NZ, among many, which sees microfarmers or market gardeners experimenting with the syntropy in agriculture and agroforestry (food forest systems).

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Other Resources (+ new GPT-powered Chatbot!)

• Syntrophy (on wikipedia)
• Ernst Gotsch website, and a great explanation of Syntropic Farming
• Microfarm Guide
• Ecosia.org : for occasional searching the web

• Chat away to the PERMABOT (an AI chatbot) and learn more….
  Share your tips and gardening lore to help the bot improve.
  You can also ask about steps in setting up your own permaculture etc. garden…

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Conclusion

Permaculture, Agroforestry, Syntropic Agroforestry… are solutions (and mindsets) against the more mechanised, large-scale (and unsustainable?) tradition of monoculture that surrounds most of us today, where we are not damaging the landscape but becoming a partner with it. We need more people practicing permaculture, in whatever context small-scale or for market, and to an extent this is happening…

Meanwhile, you’ll see some more personal artwork + nature art exploring this theme, some of which can be bought and then downloaded via my Zazzle store for small fees. This option of course, allows you to print out the artwork for personal use or printing, or even upload it again to Zazzle and create your own items with the image.

Let me know if you have any requests for certain images you’ve seen, which I may not have added to Zazzle, or any other queries, either below in comments or via contact page.

Best green wishes,

Ade mc,
Autumn in france, 2023
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[Note: if you want to create your own a.i. chatbot, see my previous post on chatbase etc.]