Many of us do not think about where our food comes from until something goes wrong. A safety recall, pest outbreak, or even a price spike at the grocery store will remind us of the process from farm to table. Behind every farm and garden is a living ecosystem that should support long-term productivity.
Conventional agriculture practices, like monoculture, have served as high-input systems with extraordinary yields over the past century. However, the costs of these practices are becoming difficult to ignore. Research published in the journal Agronomy in 2024 found that conventional agriculture practices severely deplete the soil of essential nutrients and increase susceptibility to disease, drought, and flooding.
Permaculture techniques offer a creative solution. Rather than working against natural systems, permaculture works with them by mimicking the structure and function of ecosystems to grow food in ways that are self-sustaining. This concept has been in practice since the 1970s and draws on ecological traditions far older. A landmark study in 2024 found that permaculture techniques showed significant improvements in biodiversity, soil quality, and carbon storage compared to conventional agriculture on nearby land. Permaculture management is characterized by no-dig raised beds, crop diversity and rotation, and organic soil amendments. These practices promote a dense network of beneficial fungal hyphae (underground filaments) that conventional tillage destroys.
I came to understand permaculture firsthand through my graduate research on cacao agroforestry in Southern Belize. Theobroma cacao, the chocolate tree, is one of the world’s oldest cultivated crops, and traditional farmers have long produced it within multi-layered forest systems. This is permaculture in the truest sense: canopy trees providing shade, cacao growing in the mid-story just below, and understory plants and ground cover providing moisture retention within the soil. Research has shown that these shaded, multi-species systems support far greater biodiversity and carbon storage than full-sun monocultures, while also providing timber, fruit, and other ecosystem services to farming communities. Standing inside one of those agroforests in Belize, I understood that diverse, layered systems are more resilient, more productive over time, and more alive.
That experience shaped how I think and what I grow in my own backyard. N.C. Cooperative Extension - New Hanover County Center is planning to add a food forest to the New Hanover County Arboretum, located at 6206 Oleander Drive. This demonstration garden will show homeowners and gardeners what permaculture looks like at a residential scale. Fruiting trees like pecan, fig, and American persimmon, fruiting shrubs like blueberries, perennial herbs and vegetables, and ground covers all work together the way nature intends. Once established, food forests require less water, fewer inputs, and less labor than conventional gardens.
The Friends of the New Hanover County Arboretum are accepting donations to help bring this project to life, and gifts can be designated specifically for the Food Forest at myarb.org. To follow the project's progress, learn about permaculture gardening, and find out when the food forest opens, follow N.C. Cooperative Extension - New Hanover County Center on social media or visit newhanover.ces.ncsu.edu.
Gabriella de Souza is the Consumer Horticulture Agent and EMG Coordinator for N.C. Cooperative Extension in New Hanover County, located at the New Hanover County Arboretum. She can be reached at gadesouz@ncsu.edu or 910-798-7676.
