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