Our mission
Food Security
Forests and other tree-based systems such as agroforestry contribute to food and nutritional security in myriad ways. Directly, trees provide a variety of healthy foods including fruits, leafy vegetables, nuts, seeds, and edible oils that can diversify diets and address seasonal food and nutritional gaps. Forests are also sources of a wider range of edible plants and fungi, as well as small animals, fish, and insects.
Restoration
Some plants specialize in going into the soil, mining up the hard-to-reach minerals, and bringing them back to the surface via the plant itself. Theoretically, when these plants die or drop leaves, the nutrients have moved to the soil surface. These are called dynamic accumulators, and we can include them in our gardens simply to cycle minerals back up to the surface where other plants can access them. Luckily, many dynamic accumulators have much more value than just this service.
Education
Nature provides countless opportunities for discovery, creativity, problem-solving, and STEM education. Interacting with natural environments allows us to learn by doing and experiment with ideas. In nature, we think, question, and make hypotheses — thereby developing inquisitive minds. Whether we are judging the distance between two rocks before jumping or considering where insects go in the winter, we are constantly thinking when in nature.