Silvohorticulture

Andy Dibben is currently Head Grower at Abbey Home Farm, where he is responsible for the production of over ninety different fruit and vegetable crops. Over the last eight years, Andy has been responsible for designing and establishing an agroforestry system integrating fruit, coppice and wildlife trees with field-scale vegetable production. Andy regularly writes horticultural articles and speaks at conferences, including the Oxford Real Farming Conference.Ben Raskin has worked in horticulture for more than thirty years, with a wide range of experience in practical commercial growing as well as policy and advocacy work. As the Soil Association’s Head of Horticulture and Agroforestry, he provides growers at all levels of production with technical, marketing, policy, supply chain and networking support. He is currently implementing a 200-acre silvopastural agroforestry planting in Wiltshire. Additionally, Ben co-chairs the Defra Edibles Horticulture Roundtable and sits on the boards of the Organic Growers Alliance and Community Supported Agriculture Network UK.Ben is the author of The Woodchip Handbook as well as books on gardening, including Zero-Waste Gardening, The Community Gardening Handbook and three volumes of the Discover Together Guides: Compost, Grow, and Bees, Bugs, and Butterflies.Iain Tolhurst (Tolly, as he is known in the organic world) has been a commercial organic grower since 1976. Prior to this, four years on a large dairy farm convinced him that the way forward for agriculture was organic. He also became a vegetarian at this time. He is a pioneer of organic strawberry production and he established the first ever organic growers cooperative, Cornish Organic Growers. Since 1988 Tolly has been growing on 18 acres at Hardwick Estate in south Oxfordshire. Vegetables are now the main farm business producing over 400 vegetable bags each week for a successful local box scheme. The farm has won many awards. Tolly has visited farmers and growers around the world, given regular talks and has been an advisor for governments in the Caribbean and Moldova. Since 1994 the farm has been run stockfree being the first ever to be awarded the Stockfree-Organic Symbol. The farm has become a model for the development of the Stockfree-Organic Standards and is the main demonstration site for Stockfree Systems being visited by people from all over the world.

‘Dibben and Raskin offer an insightful, inspiring but also exceptionally practical guide to integrating trees into annual cropping systems. They demonstrate how stacking a farm upwards has benefits beyond just multiple levels of harvest. From soil moisture management to shade, windbreaks and more, this book will inspire gardeners at all scales to consider what adding trees to the operation could do for them. More importantly, Dibben and Raskin will teach you exactly how to do it. It is always incredible to me how much food can be grown on a small plot of land, and in this book we see how the phrase “the sky’s the limit” has never been more applicable.’Jesse Frost, author of The Living Soil Handbook