New version, 4 July 2024. (Old About Page Archive)
Plants For A Future (PFAF) is a charitable company: Charity No.1057719, Company No.3204567
This is a brief summary of our responsibilities and activities:
Plants For A Future provides free access to a database of detailed information on over 8000 useful plants, with comprehensive search facilities. The database is regularly improved and extended, also aligned with global concerns. We also provide a native plants search. We rely mainly on many small donations to cover our costs. The information we provide is of particular value to food forest/ forest garden projects with community aims, which we encourage and support, and occasionally provide with seed funding, in return for regular feedback and (if possible) site visits. We may provide additional funding for projects which show good progress. We publish reference books featuring selections of plants by type and growing conditions.
Read on for details of each activity:
Database
You can find over 8000 edible, medicinal and other useful plants on our database by searching here.
A plant page contains detailed information including: Common name, Family name, USDA hardiness, Known hazards, Habitats, Range, Edibility Rating, Other Uses, Weed Potential, Medicinal Rating, Care.
Translation, Summary, Physical characteristics: including biennial or perennial height, tenderness, timing of flowering, seed ripening, fertility, soils suitability, acidity, sun or shade, moisture preference., Synonyms, Plant habitats: e.g. food forest, sunny edge or cultivated beds, Edible uses, Edible parts, Edible uses including which plant parts are edible, raw or cooked, how cooked, flavour, when to harvest., Medicinal uses, Other uses, Special uses, Cultivation details, Plant propagation, Other names, Countries where the plant has been found, Weed potential, Conservation status.
Useful Plants
There are over 20,000 species of edible plants in the world yet fewer than 20 species now provide 90% of our food. However, there are hundreds of less well-known edible plants from all around the world which are both delicious and nutritious. Explore edible plants here
There are many hundreds of medicinal plants that can be grown in temperate, tropical, and Mediterranean climates and there are probably a great deal more with properties as yet undiscovered. Explore medicinal plants here
Plants also have other uses. They provide us with fibres for making cloth, rope, paper etc. There are numerous dyes obtained from plants with which to colour our fabrics. Many plants have oil-rich seeds and these oils can be extracted when they have a variety of uses. Many of them are edible and they can also be used as lubricants, fuel, for lighting, in paints and varnishes, as a wood preservative, waterproofing etc. Explore plants with other uses here
Search
On the homepage you have various search options such as common and scientific names, keywords, family, habitat, and use (medicinal, edible, or other). You can browse plants alphabetically or by family, habitat, and use. You can also search by plant use, like edible, medicinal, or other purposes. For a more detailed search, you can use the Search Properties section to look for plants with specific features, such as soil type, height, or preferred conditions.
Improved and Extended
The PFAF database is continuously updated and improved as new information becomes available. We gather data from various sources, including user contributions about specific plants. Occasionally, we make significant updates by adding new plant collections, with permission. Notable sources include plant tables from books like The Carbon Farming Solution by Eric Toensmeier.
We are constantly expanding our database, having already added over 1,000 useful tropical plants. Currently, we are focusing on plants suitable for Mediterranean and dry conditions. We’ve introduced several new search categories to enhance user experience:
- Special Uses including Food Forest, Coppice, Dynamic Accumulators, and Carbon Farming
- Other Uses including Companion Planting, Cut Flowers, Edible Houseplants, and Fodder
- Medicinal Uses including Cholera, Malaria, Eczema, Leprosy, Dysentery, Antiseborrheic, Antiarrhythmic, Antidepressant, Antidiarrheal, and Epilepsy
The Carbon Farming search terms and content include Agroforestry Services, Industrial Crops, Staple Crops, and Crop Management. Additionally, our database features new information on USDA hardiness zones, common names, care icons, weed potential, and a plant's conservation status.
Aligned with Global Concerns
The name of our charitable company, Plants For A Future, came from the idea that plants, particularly diverse plantings of unusual perennials, have the potential to provide sustainable ways for people to meet our needs. In particular, permanent plantings absorb carbon dioxide and sequester it in undisturbed soils and in the woody tissues of trees and shrubs. Not only does this address climate change, it also prevents soil erosion and land degradation generally. It also addresses biodiversity loss, not only because such plantings are inherently diverse, but also because the plants grown to meet our needs for food, medicines and other uses need other plants to provide ecosystem services such as encouraging pollinators and fixing nitrogen.
Native Plants
Plants which are native or indigenous to a particular area are those plants which have not been introduced through human intervention. Note that many native plants are found in different parts of the world, even in different continents, having been moved by natural means.
In the PFAF native plants search you can select from over 900 plants ideal for food forests and permaculture gardens. The plants are selected from a database which includes the plants in our books Plants For Your Food Forest: 500 Plants for Temperate Food Forests and Permaculture Gardens, Food Forest Plants for Hotter Conditions: 250+ Perennial Plants For Tropical and Sub-Tropical Food Forests and Permaculture Gardens and also our forthcoming related book for Mediterranean and Hot Dry Climates.
The search includes a filter to search for native plants in a chosen country or state.
- Plant Type: Choose from trees, shrubs, perennials and more.
- Light, Moisture and Soil Requirements: Find plants that thrive in your garden’s specific conditions.
- Edibility, Medicinal and Other Use Ratings: Discover which plants offer culinary value, potential medicinal benefits and other uses.
- Nitrogen Fixers: Explore plants that enrich the soil by fixing nitrogen, contributing to the overall health of your garden ecosystem.
See the Native Search page and How to Page
Donations
Plants For A Future relies on regular donations to keep our free database and search facilities going, to pay for ongoing research, improvements and enhancements, and to develop and publish new books.
PFAF employs an administrator who is both a specialist in plant information and in technical aspects of database and website design and development. There is also a need to look after the day-to-day operation of the database and website, without which it would quickly become inoperative or unstable. We know from experience that this can’t be done properly by unpaid volunteers, no matter how skilled or committed they are. This is our main expense.
We get some income by selling our books, and from online advertising, but these revenues are unpredictable and together usually produce only about half of what we need. We have always managed to do a lot with very little money, and all PFAF’s management and admin tasks are done on a voluntary basis. But we still need a regular flow of donations from our individual users and supporters. You can donate here.
Food Forest
In recent years we have focused our development effort on aligning our database with strategies being devised and promoted to produce food, sequester carbon and increase biodiversity, through the establishment of Food Forests/ Forest Gardens. In 2021 this enabled us to produce our easy-to-use reference book Plants for Your Food Forest, which has become our all-time best-selling publication. We are convinced that Food Forests and complementary locally-based enterprises could be an important element in starting to bring about the widespread changes in lifestyle now urgently needed to confront the worldwide ecological crisis. More on Food Forest here.
Seed Funding
In 2021 we launched the PFAF Food Forest Fund (FFF) to provide seed funding to help new food forest projects get started. Applicants for FFF funding had to meet criteria which we set out in ‘About the PFAF Food Forest Fund’. These included sending us a description of their food forest project as an ecosystem modeled on natural processes, with the aim of growing food and sequestering carbon at the same time, on a site with secure tenure. The project should be designed to meet the needs and aspirations of those working on it or relying on it. It should include plants of various sizes and with various attributes, occupying different layers in the design: typically a canopy layer, shrub layer, herb layer and climbers; and the majority of the plants would be perennials, and all will be food producing, and/or will sequester carbon in their woody parts or in the soil, and will have useful functions within the ecosystem. To be considered for a grant, an applicant needed to provide us with some form of project plan for discussion, and be clear why start-up funding is needed and what it will be used for. We aimed to make the process as straightforward as possible, but we often asked for further information and assurances.
Engagement and Site Visits
One of our conditions for providing a grant has been that we expect some feedback and engagement from the participants. With projects in the UK, this has involved people from PFAF visiting the sites to make notes and take photographs so that we could produce photo essays for our blog. Alternatively, we have asked for short articles describing the new project. When a grant was given and the work was underway, we asked for status reports on how the project was progressing, with photos and site plans where available. We have been delighted at how well grant recipients complied with this request, and evidently found the process helpful.
Reports of projects we have funded have featured on our blog here.
Many of the reports on our blog are photo essays put together following site visits. We would welcome offers of help with visits to new food forest projects in the UK from people who are interested in such work.
Additional Funding
Establishing a food forest is inevitably a protracted process, especially when human resources are limited or where there are obstacles that have to be overcome. This can make it difficult to judge if a project is viable. Sometimes we have offered a grant that is less than the applicants hoped for, with the intention of providing additional funds for the next stage if progress has been made.
Books
PFAF has been publishing reference books featuring selections of plants from our database since 2013. Our latest book Food Forest Plants for Hotter Conditions: 250+ Perennial Plants For Tropical and Sub-Tropical Food Forests and Permaculture Gardens is published and available. This is the second of a set of three books on Perennial Plants For Food Forests and Permaculture Gardens. In 2021 we published Plants for Your Food Forest: 500 Plants for Temperate Food Forests & Permaculture Gardens, which has been very well received. The third book is to be about plants for Mediterranean and also dry conditions.
Our books are in paperback or digital formats.
Plants For A Future trustees are: Chris Marsh, Paul Harding, Ed Sears and George Sobol
Send general PFAF enquiries to Dr Christine (Chris) Marsh, administrator/ treasurer. Email [email protected], Landline 01626 888772, Mobile 07899 960860, Postal address and Reg. office 9 Priory Park Road, Dawlish, Devon EX7 9LX.
Technical website enquiries to [email protected].
The PFAF charity separated from Ken and Addy Fern’s original plants research site in Cornwall 17-18 years ago. The site is still being looked after by Addy and volunteers. To enquire about volunteering:
- Phone 01208 873554
- Write to The Field, Penpol, Lostwithiel, Cornwall, PL22 0NG.
- Or email [email protected].