Syntropic Food Forests

In the first post of this series, we shared ten benefits we had noticed after planting Eucalyptus grandis in our food garden at Seven Hills Estate. Many of those observations related to one important idea: creating better growing conditions for the plants around them. Before we began building our syntropic food garden, I mostly thought about trees in terms of production. Would they provide fruit, timber, mulch, or shade? What I had not fully appreciated was how strongly trees

For many years, the idea of planting eucalyptus trees in a food garden would have sounded completely wrong to me. When Michelle and I first learned that syntropic systems often include Eucalyptus grandis alongside productive crops, we were highly sceptical. Like many people, we assumed these fast-growing eucalyptus trees would compete for water and create problems rather than benefits. Even so, we followed the design principles we had been shown and planted them in our own fo