On a mission to develop and promote practices that can produce food and other resources for humans while enhancing biodiversity
Hello!
We hope you are well wherever you may be on our beautiful planet and a very warm welcome to our winter newsletter where you can find what we've been up to and what we're up to next.
Volunteer Project and Community Work in Shipka
If you are following our blog you will be aware that last season Sophie hosted our first European Solidarity Corps (ESC) volunteering project. We had an amazing team join, focussing on local community work in the town and learning about how to produce food and other resources for humans while enhancing biodiversity via practical work around our gardens.
The community-building aspect of the project was very rewarding as we found so many people in need of a hand. The volunteers regularly visited seven elderly people, many of whom lived alone, and helped out with garden work. A heart-warming intercultural and intergenerational exchange took place and the volunteers learned new skills and some traditional methods of preservation from the elderly people that they helped.
The community-building aspect of the project was very rewarding as we found so many people in need of a hand. The volunteers regularly visited seven elderly people, many of whom lived alone, and helped out with garden work. A heart-warming intercultural and intergenerational exchange took place and the volunteers learned new skills and some traditional methods of preservation from the elderly people that they helped.
The extra helping hands were also much appreciated in the communal parts of the town where the volunteers assisted the major's team with seasonal tasks such as watering, weeding the central park, clearing the autumn leaf fall (that made excellent mulch in the gardens), and some planting including a Butterfly Polyculture for the central park.
Thank you so much to the volunteers, it was an honour and inspiring to meet and work with such a creative and talented group of multinational young people. The future of our planet seems promising with international bright young things like this around. They all have interesting projects and talents, so check out the links for more info or to connect. Markus from Estonia, Ruxandra from Romania, Tara from Slovenia, Ruhsar from Turkey/The Netherlands, Fanny from France, Hekim from Turkey, Marco from Switzerland and Julian from Germany.
Special thanks to our wonderful Mayor Vasilka Panayotova and to Misha and Philip from the Green School Village for coordinating the ESC project. We'd also like to thank Sophie from Ura Gora Foundation for being an amazing mentor to the volunteers and for her support of the project in general and Rumyana Stoyanova, Kristiana Karneva, Elitsa Maksimova & Mihail Kossev for their involvement.
You can find a week-by-week diary of the ESC Project on our blog here.
Special thanks to our wonderful Mayor Vasilka Panayotova and to Misha and Philip from the Green School Village for coordinating the ESC project. We'd also like to thank Sophie from Ura Gora Foundation for being an amazing mentor to the volunteers and for her support of the project in general and Rumyana Stoyanova, Kristiana Karneva, Elitsa Maksimova & Mihail Kossev for their involvement.
You can find a week-by-week diary of the ESC Project on our blog here.
Land Stewardship around Koprinka Lake
We're pleased to announce that we've extended our land stewardship by 2.4 hectares to include land around Koprinka Lake nearby to our site in Shipka.
We have some great plans for the future development of this site, that we'll be sharing in our next newsletter. For the immediate future, the site will be managed as a wildlife reserve, allowing natural succession to work its magic. We'll probably harvest some Robinia pseudoacacia saplings, that are growing around the periphery of the site, to prevent them from taking over the area and encourage more diversity in the herb layer.
We've already started to create some conceptual designs for the site, segmenting the area into 30 forest gardens with small cabins.
Thank you Georgi Pavlov for the beautiful artistic impression of the garden designs and we look forward to working with Georgi further as we develop this project.
Regenerative Landscape Design - Online Interactive Course
Want to learn how to design, build and manage regenerative landscapes? Join us for our Regenerative Landscape Design - Online Interactive Course from May 1st to Sep 13th, 2023.
We're super excited about running the course and look forward to providing you with the confidence, inspiration, and opportunity to design, build and manage regenerative landscapes, gardens, and farms that produce food and other resources for humans while enhancing biodiversity.
Regenerative Landscape Design Online Course
You can find out all about the course here and right now we have a 20% discount on the full enrollment fees. Just use the promo code RLD2023 in the section of the registration form to receive your discount.
We are looking forward to providing you with this unique online learning experience - as far as we know, the very first of its kind. If you are thinking of reasons why you should do this course and whether this course is suitable for you, take a look here where we lay it all out. Looking forward to it!
We're super excited about running the course and look forward to providing you with the confidence, inspiration, and opportunity to design, build and manage regenerative landscapes, gardens, and farms that produce food and other resources for humans while enhancing biodiversity.
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| Regenerative Landscape Design Online Course |
You can find out all about the course here and right now we have a 20% discount on the full enrollment fees. Just use the promo code RLD2023 in the section of the registration form to receive your discount.
We are looking forward to providing you with this unique online learning experience - as far as we know, the very first of its kind. If you are thinking of reasons why you should do this course and whether this course is suitable for you, take a look here where we lay it all out. Looking forward to it!
Our Forest Garden Nursery
The good news is that more and more people are starting forest gardens. We know this because we continue to receive more and more emails from new people and projects that would like us to send them plants, bulbs, cuttings, and seeds. It's a real pleasure to comply, thank you so much to our customers for giving our plants new happy homes.
New Plants in The Nursery for 2022
We've been continuing to expand the diversity of plants we offer from the nursery always focussing on plants that are beneficial to wildlife, provide fertility to the gardens, and of course produce delicious fruits and nuts. New plants this season include the below. Click on plant names for the full plant profile.
Edibles
Corylus colurna - Turkish HazelDiospyros lotus - Plum Date
Tilia tomentosa - Silver Lime
Thymus x citriodorus Lemon Thyme
Ocimum sp. - Perennial Basil 'Magic Blue'
Woodland Trees/Hedging Plants
Acer campestre - Field Maple
Carpinus betulus - Hornbeam
Corylus colurna - Turkish Hazel
Fraxinus ornus - Manna Ash
Liquidambar styraciflua - Sweet Gum
Maclura pomifera - Osage Orange
Ostrya carpinifolia - Hop Hornbeam
Quercus rubra - Red Oak
Taxus baccata - English Yew
Herbs
Sideritis syriaca Ironwort
Achillea clypeolata - Balkan Yarrow
Artemisia abrotanum - Southernwood
Thymus x citriodorus Lemon Thyme
Ocimum sp. - Perennial Basil 'Magic Blue'
New Cultivars for 2022
We have a new selection of grafted Sour Cherry and Jujube cultivars. Click on the banners for cultivar details
For our full selection of fruit and nut cultivars click here
For bulbs, tubers, seeds, and root cuttings "click to buy" all year round from our online store here.
Polyculture Study
Given the uncertainty that a certain submicroscopic infectious agent has produced over the last few years, we found it rather difficult to plan for and organize our Polyculture Study. We made the decision to put the research on pause for a while and try some other options such as the ESC project that Sophie ran last year. I (Paul) took some time to travel, write and plan for some future projects we're working on.
We've also taken this opportunity to improve the project site infrastructure in order to address some problems, namely, irrigation, wild animals eating our research, and having our gardens spread out over the town. In response to this, we're focussing on a new area to concentrate our research and demonstration gardens and should have the area fenced by spring and a perennial source of water installed.
We've also taken this opportunity to improve the project site infrastructure in order to address some problems, namely, irrigation, wild animals eating our research, and having our gardens spread out over the town. In response to this, we're focussing on a new area to concentrate our research and demonstration gardens and should have the area fenced by spring and a perennial source of water installed.
Dylan will be maintaining the gardens and keeping the nursery plants watered this Spring and Summer and we're looking forward to resuming our research project in 2024.
You can find records and reports from our polyculture research from previous years here.
You can find records and reports from our polyculture research from previous years here.
Spring Open Day - April 17th, 2022
Come along, we look forward to meeting you!
We made it to the Top 10!
Thanks to all of our readers and supporters that enjoy and share our content, we have moved up into the top 10 most popular ecology blogs on the planet according to Feedspot's Top 40 ecology blogs and websites.
Their selection is based on a combination of algorithmic and human editing that, they claim, offers the best means of curation. Seeing as we did not submit our blog to the website it seems the algorithms are picking up on the global support and interest in our project, which is fantastic!
We really appreciate it when you like, comment, and share our work. It provides us with moral support and encouragement, helps more people find our project, and hopefully builds towards helping us on our mission to develop and promote practices that can produce food and other resources for humans while enhancing biodiversity.
So again, a big thank you to all of our readers and supporters :)
Their selection is based on a combination of algorithmic and human editing that, they claim, offers the best means of curation. Seeing as we did not submit our blog to the website it seems the algorithms are picking up on the global support and interest in our project, which is fantastic!
We really appreciate it when you like, comment, and share our work. It provides us with moral support and encouragement, helps more people find our project, and hopefully builds towards helping us on our mission to develop and promote practices that can produce food and other resources for humans while enhancing biodiversity.
So again, a big thank you to all of our readers and supporters :)
New Payment System for 2022
We are super grateful that our project continues to grow attention from around the world both from the people that visit our project for courses, internships, and volunteer programs and the people that read our blog, join our online courses, buy our plants and seeds online and follow the information we share via social media. According to google analytics, the only countries we have not had visitors from, so far, are Mauritania, Central African Republic, and Republic of the Congo (marked with red dots on the map below) If you know someone from those countries, please share :)
Given that our audience and customer base are from all over the world, this presents a challenge in how we process payments. Recently we have been looking into ways to make this easier for our customers as well as ourselves and we're pleased to announce that we will be trying out FTX Pay and now accept digital $ (USDC or USDT). We'll be integrating this payment option into our website and can take payments peer to peer from anyone on the planet with a cryptocurrency wallet or an FTX account. If you don't have an FTX account, you can create an account and enjoy this new payment network for yourself or for your own business here.
As a side note, this is by no means an endorsement of all cryptocurrency. As this nascent technology finds the path to becoming practically useful, the way is paved with insidious scammers so please do be careful. We are only offering this service because it appears to us to be a legitimate business that is solving a real problem.
New Blog Posts and Articles from 2021
Sophie took on the bulk of the blogging last year and you can find her weekly diary for 2021 here. We've also been co-writing some new growing guides of fruit and nut trees that we love, which you can find below.
The Essential Guide to Probably Everything you Need to Know about Growing Cornelian Cherry - Cornus mas
The Essential Guide to Probably Everything you Need to Know about Growing Cornelian Cherry - Cornus mas
With the research program on hold for now I (Paul) took the opportunity to travel last year and will continue to do so this year. I'll be blogging about the plants and gardens I come across during my travels. You can find some of last year's posts about plants in Turkey below.
Plants in the City - Istanbul
Plants in the City - Istanbul - The European Side
Plants in the City - Istanbul - The Asian Side
Plants of Turkey - Göreme Valley, Cappadocia
Plants in the City - Istanbul - The European Side
Plants in the City - Istanbul - The Asian Side
Plants of Turkey - Göreme Valley, Cappadocia
You can also follow day-to-day observations, largely related to plants that I come across, during my travels on our Instagram account here.
Thanks, as always, to Permaculture Research Institute and Permaculture Magazine for continuing to publish our articles and blog posts and for sharing our work with a wider audience.
2023 International Forest Garden / Food Forest Symposium
Following the success of the first Symposium, the second International Forest Garden / Food Forest Symposium will be held online from 21-24 February 2023. Hosted by Martin Crawford, this online gathering of forest gardening and food forest practitioners and academic researchers explores the current state and future prospects for these regenerative land-use systems. You can find out more about the event, how to apply for your own presentation and ticket ordering here.
That's all from us for now, wishing you productive seasons and happy growing in 2022!
Thanks again to all our friends, family, volunteers, readers, and customers that make our project possible.
Until next time!
Paul, Sophie, Dylan, and Archie
Thanks again to all our friends, family, volunteers, readers, and customers that make our project possible.
Until next time!
Paul, Sophie, Dylan, and Archie
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