Paradise Lot: Growing an Edible Garden Oasis

Paradise Lot food forest is coming to Boston! Join Jonathan Bates as he gives a presentation about his famous backyard food forest based in Holyoke, Mass. Jonathan’s talk will focus on perennial vegetables for our region, soil building, plant polycultures, and food gardening in small urban spaces. Get answers to your questions about working with poor soil, little sunlight, and New England’s growing season from his years of experience.

The Speaker
Jonathan Bates owns Food Forest Farm, and he and his wife and garden partners are best known for their backyard food forest “Paradise Lot” in Holyoke, Mass. Together, they turned a tenth-of-an-acre barren lot with bad soil into an inspiring “permaculture paradise” replete with perennial broccoli, paw paws, bananas, and moringa—all told, more than two hundred low-maintenance edible plants in an innovative food forest on a tiny city lot. Now the two families live there communally, gardening together, eating the food (over 400 pounds in 6 months!), and sharing what they have learned in this backyard experiment with the public. http://www.foodforestfarm.com/
http://paradiselotblog.wordpress.com/

Hundreds of people tour Paradise Lot each year and there is even a New York Times article about it. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/garden/a-permaculture-love-story.html?_r=1&;

Preorder Plants
Food Forest Farm sells very unusual perennial edible plants (way beyond asparagus) at their nursery and people who come to the event will be able to find out how to get some of these very-hard-to-find plants.