After a year and a half of thinking about it -and after visiting Scott Hall on his farm, as well as the Permadynamics family in New Zealand - I finally took the leap and planted an infestation block of Acacia saligna. In this video, I am breaking down what Infestation actually means, and why it can be such a powerful lever - especially in brittle climates (Arid, Semi-arid or Mediterranean climates) Infestation isn’t a standalone method. It’s the first step in a broader framework called Successional Accumulation, a concept developed and coined by Scott Hall. The process unfolds in these three stages: - Infestation - Stabilisation - Succession We’ll dive deeper into each of these steps here on the platform as we go ! What I’ve found is that this approach is far more practical at scale than trying to plant everything all at once - especially when you’re limited in water, amendments, or access. And Scott covers his experience with it on his platform. It’s a way to work with constraints instead of fighting them, and it can significantly reduce costs while setting up a long-term resilience strategy. I’d really love to hear your thoughts. What species have you seen that could play a similar role in your climate ?

Hey everyone! I’m starting a new series on agroforestry plants, with each plant covered in two parts: 🌱 Part 1: Description and general characteristics ✂️ Part 2: Pruning and propagation techniques This first video is about perennial Artemisia species : Artemisia absinthium and Artemisia arborescens. Any otehr Artemisias you can think about that would do a similar job. In the Mediterranean basin, thsoe are the most readily available. I’ll also be making some of these videos exclusive content on Skool very soon (not available on Youtube) - stay tuned!

Hi everyone! We’re Nicole & Carlos. We recently bought 2 hectares of land in the Costa Blanca. It’s still early days, but the idea is to turn this land into a diverse, productive, and regenerative system inspired by syntropic agroforestry. Our vision is pretty simple. We want to create an efficient system that produces great fruit and sell it directly to the local community, while at the same time regenerating the soil and increasing biodiversity. Beyond that, we’d love for this to become a kind of community space — with workshops, educational offers, and things like u-pick days where people can come, connect, and experience the land. Last week we did our first small pilot planting, which was a big milestone. Now we’re really excited to observe what actually grows well here and learn from it. That’s going to guide everything that comes next. The plan is to use what we learn to design a bigger planting by this autumn/ next spring— similar to the “infestation” idea. We’d love to connect with others in the region who are into similar things — feel free to reach out! 🙂 Looking forward to learning and growing together. 🌱

Hey you all ! I’m starting to document all the plantations I’ve designed and planted and plan to update you every few months so you can track growth and refer back to past videos. This is the largest plantation I’ve designed and planted so far—with the help of volunteers, it covers 6,000 m². This is an almond grove with seedless grapes climbing eucalypts in between. This is what I call a “hybrid infestation – plant all at once”, as we’re really seeing the planting in two steps: 1- The placenta and secondary species - letting the myoporum, eucs, casuarinas and acacias form a continuous hedge in between the almonds. 2- Years down the line when appropriate - when almonds start producing well - coppice the acacias, eucs, casuarinas, tamarix and myoporums let them regrow for the ones that recover. Then plant the next wave of succession on a growth pulese : grevillea robusta as a long-term emergent - Planting it now alongside the eucalypts is an experiment to see if it can survive next to their sizable trunks; some may need replanting. I would also plant the low-ish strata - Main : Viburnum tinus good drought-resistance and reliable - Others: Prunus lusitanica, Ruscus apophyllum, and Acanthus mollis (testing them out) The only ick is that I have to make sure that I find a plant that can handle coppicing really well when harvesting the almonds. One challenge is finding plants that can handle coppicing well during almond harvesting. One idea is to have two people pulling nets while another shakes the tree, allowing almonds to drop without stressing the understory. The other is to use plants like Acanthus mollis, which go dormant in summer, then the ground is free to put nets down. Finally, I’ve considered seed bombs of primary forest species like carob, olive, lentiscus, Italian buckthorn, etc.. - an idea Scott Hall gave me. Birds might naturally assist with this in 5 years, but adding seed bombs then would act as “biomass insurance.” Although slow initially, with improved soil fertility after 5 years, these species should establish much faster than in the current poor soil.