In January 2022 we (PFAF) announced our Food Forest Fund (FFF), which is designed to award small grants to help new food forest projects get started, or move on to a new stage. In recent years PFAF has been focused…
Biomass in gigatons of carbon (GtC) is a measure of abundance in the biosphere. Perhaps it is no surprise that the most abundant taxonomic group is plants at 450 GtC, but I was surprised to learn that all animals…
The main role of (PFAF) for over 10 years has been to provide freely available non-commercial access to our database of over 8000 useful plants, for food, medicines and other uses. PFAF is very dependent on a flow of many…
In his book Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life, Edward O. Wilson argues that the solution to the present planetary crisis is to dedicate half the surface of the Earth to wild nature.[1] The other half Earth would be used…
A delicious fruit for the autumn. Sorbus domestica is a deciduous tree growing to 15m (50ft) at a medium rate with a trunk up to 1m (3′ 4″) in diameter. On exposed sites it may only grow to be a…
A favourite nut growing on large evergreen trees, Cashew (Anacardium occidentale), grows up to 10-12m tall with a short and usually irregularly-shaped trunk. The dwarf version growing to 6m is preferred for commercial crops. It has spreading branches and a…
Stinging Nettle is a fantastic underused weed with excellent edible, medicinal and other uses. The Young leaves are cooked as a potherb and added to soups etc. They can also be dried for winter use. Nettles are a very valuable…
Serviceberry is a small deciduous tree or large shrub growing to 6 m (19ft) by 4 m (13ft). It is in flower in April, and the seeds ripen from Jun to July. The flowers are hermaphrodite (have both male and…
A gorgeous plant in the garden but do you know they also have medicinal and edible uses? A lovely Valentine’s plant, peony flowers are reported to have a number of meanings including prosperity, romance, compassion, and bashfulness. In Greek myth…
Plants For A Future have an excellent search tool to help you find plants for your project out of the 7700 available in the database. The Search tool can now be found on the homepage at pfaf.org. Search techniques includes:…
