Does L.A. have an answer to this? If you know, please share...
Towards sustainability,
Thanks,
Dennis

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Living Mandala <livingmandala@livingmandala.com>
Sent: Mon, October 26, 2009 2:29:17 PM
Subject: [Lapg] Transform Your Lawn Into A Food Forest!

Dear Friends,

Please help us spread the word about this upcoming weekend offering in the S.F Bay Area with the Food Forest Across America Campaign intended to ignite a fire of inspiration and action to transform lawns, parks, gardens, private residences, public places and empty spaces into thriving edible landscapes that are beautiful, regenerative, and produce an abundance of delicious, locally grown food!

-Jay Ma

____________________

Transform Your Lawn Into a Food Forest!

Hands-on Training to Design and Implement Edible Landscapes 

November 6 - 8  (all weekend or any one day)

Berkeley, CA

For More Info & Registration Visit LivingMandala.com



In Association with

Food Forests Across America Campaign


Including

PERMACULTURE, FOOD FORESTS, SHEET MULCHING, SOIL BUILDING, MUSHROOM INOCULATION, DESIGN TOOLS, SWALES & EARTHWORKS, WATER ON THE LANDSCAPE, PLANTING & MULCHING, AND MUCH MORE!


Course Description

In an uncertain economy and changing world, local food security is an essential element to becoming sustainable in this emerging Green Economy. This course is a community offering by the Food Forests Food Forests Across America campaign. Food Forests Across America is a loosely affiliated group of permaculture designers organizing around the initiative to transform lawns, parks, gardens, private residences, public places and empty spaces into thriving edible landscapes that are beautiful, regenerative, and produce an abundance of delicious, locally grown food! Our intention with this course is to inspire a Food Forest revolution in Berkeley and the surrounding Bay area cities. This weekend course immerses participants in the hands-on reality of designing & co-creating a food forest on a typical small urban landscape. During this weekend course, participants will learn through hands-on experience how to transform their yard into a thriving edible landscape.


What is a Food Forest Garden?

Imagine a forest where every single tree is dripping with fresh fruits and ripening nuts... every shrub is packed with delicious berries, and every other plant is a medicinal herb, culinary spice, or beautiful edible flower. Tubers and root crops are abundant underfoot, gourmet mushroom logs sprout in the shade, and hardy kiwi vines climb back up through the layers of this multi-functional forest of food. Food forests are diverse gardens modeled after natural ecosystems designed to mimic the way a forest thrives and regenerates. A forest continuously nourishing all elements in the system and produce a vast diversity of outputs, but requires little or no inputs to sustain itself. By recognizing the self-supporting, mutually beneficial relationships of the elements in a forest - from tall trees, smaller trees, shrubs, herbs, ground covers, vines, nitrogen fixers, insectaries, fungi, animals, and more, the food forest garden designs a similar system but replaces the components that are in a common forest with species that are preferred edibles and more useful for humans. The forest then becomes a Garden of Eden, in which edible or useful plants are found from head to toe, where something in season is always ready to eat, and the system requires little or no maintenance to sustain and regenerate indefinitely.


Tuition & Registration

This course is a very modestly priced at $65 for the entire weekend, or $30 per day. You may come for the entire weekend or any of the three days. Space is limited.


Transform Your Lawn Into a Food Forest

For additional support services on food forest and permaculture design and implementation email: forestgarden@livingmandala.com


Become a Sponsor

We are seeking sponsor of this workshop in Berkeley and the Food Forests Across America Campaign at large in the form of plants, drip irrigation supplies, garden supplies, garden tools, media exposure, and monetary resources.


Benefits of Becoming a Sponsor

Along with supporting an amazing initiative responding to some of the most crucial issues of our time in local food security, sustainability, and climate change, sponsors of the campaign and the upcoming workshop in Berkeley will receive exposure through our website, marketing materials, and general public outreach including radio appearances and other press coverage. Nurseries and irrigation supply stores who donate plants, tools, irrigation supplies, or other materials will get great exposure to a target market of interested workshop participants and eager to go home and transform their own yards into edible landscapes. We will refer people who attend the workshop to buy materials from our sponsors. 

To become a sponsor please email: forestgarden@livingmandala.com or call 707-634-1461


Food Forests Across America Campaign.

Food Forests Across America is a loosely affiliated group of permaculture designers organizing around the initiative to transform lawns, parks, gardens, private residences, public places, and empty spaces into thriving edible landscapes that are beautiful, regenerative, and produce an abundance of delicious, locally grown food! Members of this group or permaculture designers are actively organizing workshops, projects, and initiatives installing food forest gardens around the country. Food Forests Across America appeared on Visionary Culture Radio in April of 2009, at Harmony Festival in June of 2009, and at Earthdance in September 2009 showcasing a demonstration food forest garden, giving interactive tours, and hosting a panel discussion of permaculture designers. Food Forests Across America is seeking to raise money to build a website to more closely link together our work and the work of other permaculture designers and food foresters around the country. Our intention is to showcase and promote food forests workshops and projects, and to powerfully inoculate this initiative into the culture at large. Join the campaign for local food security and learn how you can help to transform gardens, lawns, parks, and empty spaces into thriving edible landscapes that are beautiful, regenerative, and produce an abundance of delicious, locally grown food!  

For more information visit: http://www.livingmandala.com/Living_Mandala/Community_Projects.html


Food Forests Across America on Visionary Culture Radio - Wed, Oct 28th!


Wed, Oct 28th, 7:00 pm PST

Call In :: 646-649-1957
Or Log In or Listen On-line :: www.visionarycultureradio.com

Tune into Visionary Culture Radio with host Laura Fox on Wednesday, Oct 28 for a show on Food Forests Across America with guest permaculture teachers from the east to west coasts of the U.S.

Special Guests Include:

Trathen Heckman - Exucutiver Director - Daily Acts
Jay Ma - Co-Founder, Director of Programs & Development - Living Mandala
Marisha Auerbach - Founder & Director - Herb 'n Wisdom
Ethan Roland - Founder & Director - AppleSeed Permaculture
Devin Slavin - Founder - Grow Food Party Crew