posted 2 years ago
Sooo.... how many tree species should you aim for to make a sustainable and vibrant forest garden? And, I mean so sustainable that it will not only outlive me, but start to expand on its own. Sorry if this has been posted before, but my topic search resulted in nothing. BTW I am only counting woody tree species, not herbaceous or bushes.
Stephen Sobkowiak believes that 3 species is enough (pear, apple, honey locust). My current natural forest has only two tree species of pinyon and juniper though they are a small number (less than 10% total) of cottonwoods, gambel oak, siberian elm, New Mexico locust, chokecherry and russian olive so that's 8. The Chinese reforestation project caught alot of flak for planting monocultures of pines or black locust. Critics say these forests will suffer long term and may even die out due to lack of diversity. I'm pretty sure Geoff Lawton has somewhere near 100 species of trees. My current number of tree species is 24 however, the list of trees that would work in my growing conditions is getting really short. I could add some more exotic species, but they would require huge amounts of water and thus would not be sustainable. I think I would top out at 35-40 species due to dry conditions, but that's adding many species that don't provide any direct benefit to the humans (stuff like osage orange or New Mexico Privet). Secondly, that's going to include many non-native species which will have limited benefit to the local environment.
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