Edible food forests – gourmet eateries of the future?

Edible food forests – gourmet eateries of the future Earth-Based Living For The Future:
Picture yourself in a forest where almost everything around you is food….Mature and maturing fruit and nut trees form an open canopy. If you look carefully, you can see fruits swelling on many branches—pears, apples, persimmons, pecans, and chestnuts. Shrubs fill the gaps in the canopy. They bear raspberries, blueberries, currants, hazelnuts, and other lesser-known fruits, flowers, and nuts at different times of the year.
Assorted native wildflowers, wild edibles, herbs, and perennial vegetables thickly cover the ground. You use many of these plants for food or medicine. Some attract beneficial insects, birds, and butterflies. Others act as soil builders, or simply help keep out weeds. Here and there vines climb on trees, shrubs, or arbors with fruit hanging through the foliage—hardy kiwis, grapes, and passionflower fruits.

Tale of two gardens - differences in post-storm management hold lessons for others; Lake Wales, FL

2 Famed Polk Attractions Transformed by Storms | theledger.com | The Ledger | Lakeland, FL
By Gary White
THE LEDGER
Published: Saturday, August 8, 2009 at 11:55 p.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, August 8, 2009 at 11:55 p.m.
LAKE WALES | At dawn on the morning after Hurricane Charley churned through Polk County, David Price surveyed the devastation at Bok Tower Gardens and briefly gave in to despair.
'I felt my knees getting weak,' said Price, then director of horticulture at the Lake Wales natural attraction and now its president. 'That's how bad it was.'
The hurricane ravaged live oak, magnolia and longleaf pine trees that had stood in the gardens since before the attraction opened in 1929. In Price's estimate, Charley and two successive hurricanes claimed more than 200 trees at the 250-acre gardens. Some of the trees were uprooted; others died gradually after being weakened and attacked by pine bark beetles.