Tree Planting Sites

Does anyone do this? Cyber-planting?

such as:
http://www.tree-nation.com

I was thinking...one of the options is to work with them to design your own forest. What if there were a couple permaculturalists in the tropics (where the CO2 impact of planting a tree is greater) and they designed the species they needed to create a food forest, and then all of us in temperate zones could help them build the forest in cyberspace?

There seem to be lots of projects already going:
http://www.tree-nation.com/forests

But few/none of them are permie.
I noticed that a lot of the trees they're planting either do not have immediate benefit, or are not worked into a permaculture design.

It's like another project that helps build annual gardens in Africa. They should probably be building food forests!
It just seems like there are a lot of un-tapped organizations that could use a little permaculture.

Anyway, if anyone has information on the effectiveness of cyber planting trees, it would be edifying. I just planted one for a friend's birthday.

william

Hi William,

We used to sell trees as an investment. I have been told we have some of the best plantations in Costa Rica because we did mixed plantings, much of them are 75% Acacia (nitrogeon fixing), 25% natives. Works wonderfully so well that some forestry engineers here are studying it. I came up with it by observation and experimentation. What is incredible is that Acacia Mangium loves slopes but many rarer trees don't, except in the wild. But, if you plant Acacia, almost anything will grow on the slope with it. Truly incredible. In total, we have planted more than 40 different species.

We sold the trees as an investment (which is working a heck of a lot better than the stock market) and with the commitment from us that the forest would stay forest afterwards, i.e. no clear cutting, because we will encourage growth of other trees after first thinnings. We are in the part of the process now, and it is working better than I ever imagined. I have to thin volunteers more than plant.

We stopped back in 2008 when the crash came due to not enough people buying to ensure I could buy a farm a year. Also, we have reforested nearly 900 acres now, and it is getting to be a bit much for me to visit all the time. I am not old (52) but 900 acres of forest is a heck of a lot of land. Now we are in the harvest phase which includes replanting.

We live on the smallest plantations, only about 70 acres, and I don't even know all the nooks and cranies of it and I am doing a food forest on that land, pretty much everyday. I even have a full-time person who helps me do this.

I would cheerfully plant trees for people who wished to reduce carbon - in total we have planted more than 150,000 trees.

I will warn you all, beware investing in trees though, there have been many many scams, unfortunately. The idea is sound but the problem is verification that the people are doing what they are supposed to be doing. People get into the mindset they are selling trees and don't take care of the plantations. Costa Rica has a very high percentage of neglected plantations.