Geoff, you inspired my husband and I to put in permaculture forest and small-scale gardens at the last two places we have lived. Now we have 20 acres and have big plans to really go at it. Blessings and thank you!
Geoff your idea and the persistence of the local people is a testament to what is achievable in an arid area.Though with extra water needs it shows that even with the basic components of soil building anything is possible and this is a legacy to you and the teachings of the late great Bill Mollison and both of you are an emphatic inspiration to the husbandry and stewardship of soil management and the permaculture movement here in Australia and globally,I take my hat off to you both,be safe and take care.
I am glad to hear there are lots of moringa being planted I grew up with the stuff every where my mum moved to in Africa she planted several moringa plants they then grew into tall trees. It sounds like thunder that must be a comforting sound in the desert. The Spiky acacia reminded me of Kenya, this food forest reminds me of a friends garden I visited as a child in Mombasa Kenya the soil looked dry like that, but all the fruit trees forming an over head canopy looked like paradise.
amaizing!! hope my farm is going to look like this one day. dessert area of spain, no water no rain. bussy with chickencoop, lots of fun. anyone who wants to help, you are most welcome.
Geoff has planted many seeds but the most important ones are all the seeds he has planted in peoples minds and hearts. 10 years ago most people were not aware of permaculture and now people are doing it all over the world on small and grand scale because of him. Now there have been other people also of course , that have done a great job also, but I would guess the original greening the desert video here on youtube has made a greater worldwide impact than anything else when it comes to informing and inspiring people all over the world.
Amazing. Your work has been most inspiring for me, as I live in a climate almost exactly like this one. We receive roughly six inches of rainfall per year with summer temperatures ranging from 54 to 32ish degrees and no humidity. Heavy alkaline clay soil with sandy patches.Through utilizing my household greywater, captured rain water, and careful site selection/construction I now have pomegranates, citrus, dates, acerola cherry, olives, figs, elderberry, mulberry, argan, tamarind, grapes, and peaches. Pecans, pistachios, almonds, guava, and banana will be going in shortly. Other species include acacia willows (they blew in from somewhere and I now have four mature trees on my property which I frequently cut for mulch), bougainvillea, mondell pine, rosewood, chilean mesquite, escarpment live oak, creeping rosemary, trailing lantana, assorted mints (I grow this in the shade as ground cover), artichokes (they're perennials here), asparagus, arabian jasmine (in the shade), and even rhubarb. My crook neck watermelons took off in the dead of summer in full sun-- the vines covered my whole back yard and they produced heavily. Our community is quite poor. Many of these plants I started from seeds or cuttings that I scavenged, ordered online, or smuggled across state lines. I hope to one day expand this...pursuit, and do work much like yours. Best wishes x
impressive to see that even with the enormous drought stress and the stress of too many people walking the ground, the system still performs. It seems to function like a local people (children) magnet too.
well just imagine if your natural environment is arid. all you see as far as the eyes can see is just nothing more than arid lands, then you see this tiny plot filled with lots of greenery plants. it's to us is like seeing a herds of lion in mountainous alps.
Great tour! S much abundance everywhere! Great job friend for your hardwork, and wonderful techniques of bringing permaculture to a school! Exactly the education everyone needs. Thanks for teaching the children.
Great work! Hope the local community take this shining example on! Seeing those palms laden with dates makes me want to try growing them in Melb... bit of a stretch of the imagination!
The temperature differences under the canopy much be very noticeable. If enough neighbors adopted these techniques you could create a microclimate in there area. In the Caribbean we have those spikey trees. The are invasive and very sharp. Getting rid of them has been very difficult.
Thank you SO much for sharing this, I could sit here watching you all day long! It is so important to be the change and prove that it IS possible to green the desert - while it happens to be a paradise!
This is excellent Team Lawton! The mixture of life, chaos, limitations and design has created abundance-the exact disruption this little piece of Earth needed :) Great work.
I, remenber de first video you uploaded. Of this garden. And it sounded to me very optimistic. But now that I, see it looks exactly how you said, it will look like.
That is awesome, how people can change their reality in such a harsh place. i would just keep record of that imported water to back up its not really a huge consumption. i agree with you if more land were manage by the same principles the aquifers will recharge .. my respects from Monterrey Mexico
This is awesome idea..i would love to see more ppl do this...a lot of the plants you have named i haven't heard of...Pineapple, sea grapes, coconut & aloe would also do well there.
Geoff, I note from your video that great effort is put into recycling/reusing growing containers. You might be interested to check out what the Lebanon Reforestation Initiative is using to propagate their trees. Specially designed, fully reusable & they find that the design helps a lot with promoting stronger root development. Since you're working in the region, might be worth a look. An excellent way to eliminate single use plastic, simultaneously lowering costs.
It's inspiring to see how you've transformed pretty much nothing into something meaningful, on multiple scales, establishing a belief-changing perspective, for others to see that with the right kind of attention to understanding how nature works, stress and negative emotions from scarcity can be turned into good feelings and positive emotions through human-nature collaborated abundance :) Thank you for your determination, Geoff! Keep up the amazing work!
Surprised and impressed to see and learn about such a project in Jordan. Thank you very Geoff for this video and the efforts. I wonder in which region/area it is in Jordan? I subscribed to your channel and will start to watch the other videos and the website to learn more about it. I will share the video in social media so other Jordanians can see also.
Hi Geoff! I’ve been watching your RUclips videos for about over a year now. It’s amazing how you transform the desert into the food forest. I’m so inspired by all you do. I just bought a 5+ acres of land on a slope in zone 8a/b with night time temperature 30-40 degrees Fahrenheit. Can I plant those trees that you listed in this video? The soil looks similar to my soil! Thank you so much for what you do!
Thanks for the update on this project I looking for wishing for an update for a while now. Do you plan an update to any of the other Greening the Desert? Like the talk you did with the Jordanian Government.
I saw a video of a guy using wood chips to create fertile ground for his garden. Had a lot of produce from amongst others citrus fruits and a lot of vegetbables. Also using one plant to protect and nurture another. Through the years he had accumulated 3 feet of fertile earth with wood chips on top. Of course this wasn't in Jordan but in Arizona I believe. Still very dry climate and the only one in his neighbourhood with any green besides some flakes of grass. I don't say you could just transport the same system to Jordan and it would take a few years to produce fertile earth, but just my two cents.
What a great project you and your team at Greening The Desert are doing! Teaching others and showing by demonstrating permaculture techniques, it’s simply amazing. I do have a question and I don’t know if there is an answer for it or not, but if more and more people (in the area there near the Dead Sea) started practicing this style of “regreening” how long before the actual climate would begin to change or would it change at all?
geoff do you already have or can you post a video on constructing a reed bed? thanks! I appreciate all your hard work, we're trying to green a patch in the high desert in california
Om Ah Houm With the crazy activities that are happening nowadays... this is priceless knowledge and wisdom... Cheers! May everyone reach their Blissful states, quickly!
Well done. If you can grow Singapore Daisy, then you would be able to grow pinto peanut which isnt a weed and is beneficial to the soil, microbes and insects.
There are ways of pruning olive trees that will greatly reduce the alternance in production. The best working technique is known as poly-conic pruning. It stimulates gowth of olives in lower branches and makes picking easier as well.
Awesome progress! Tweeted via @cecalli_helper. Thank you for all your studies & work, Geoff. RIP Bill. @UN seriously needs to support your work. Shame they don't.
Glad to hear that the long-term vision is to make this a rainfed garden! 20 times your 2000 m² garden area, that's a lot though. For a start: I see that the street outside the main entrance has a light slope to it and is fairly unmaintained. Maybe you can put in curbside runoff harvesting there?
I'd like to thank you for showing the reality after a hot, dry summer. In Australia, this is what my garden plants (and nursery) looks like too. It can be difficult when you're planting in extreme conditions, and all you see from permaculture sites is "plump greenery" - the natural conclusion, is that you must be doing something wrong. But more often than not, those green sites are located with an excess of natural rainfall, and moderate heat. So the plants really lack for nothing. A question about the pollarding of the leucaena though - when you prune next, will you be cutting underneath the existing pollard (slightly) or will you be pruning back the new branches, so they branch on the branches, if that makes sense?
the proposis juliflora is a knightmare plant in E. Africa the horn... great nuisance, won't let other plant grow, very deep roots so troublesome to remove
Koshin Garane please read Fred Pearce’s book The New Wild and you will realise that weeds are the saviours of the world and we now have all the evidence. Bill said this 40 years ago and always stuck to it.
I have a composting toilet on my small farm in Africa, and was hoping I could use compost of fruit and nut trees, but it is hard for me to find clear guidance related to safety. The toilet produces beautiful compost, but I have been afraid to use it.
Hi Paul if the compost has been processed at least 10 months it is pretty safe and it is mostly only your family using the toilet and your family consuming the fruit and nuts it is completely safe. It is probably safe in a much shorter time with many strangers using the toilet but there can be just the odd variation that maybe unforeseen.
Humanity owes you for your dedication to ecological restoration.
Geoff, you inspired my husband and I to put in permaculture forest and small-scale gardens at the last two places we have lived. Now we have 20 acres and have big plans to really go at it. Blessings and thank you!
How did it go?
Geoff Lawton - doing more for humanity and the earth than many churches and big tech combined ...... God bless!
Amen to that brother
We need more Geoff. The earth needs more Geoffs.
Julie Wigner be Geoff
To green the desert is a great blessing for the world
Geoff your idea and the persistence of the local people is a testament to what is achievable in an arid area.Though with extra water needs it shows that even with the basic components of soil building anything is possible and this is a legacy to you and the teachings of the late great Bill Mollison and both of you are an emphatic inspiration to the husbandry and stewardship of soil management and the permaculture movement here in Australia and globally,I take my hat off to you both,be safe and take care.
I can see soil building little by little....work aligned with life is blessed. Wonderful
Wow, brilliant 🌈
I am glad to hear there are lots of moringa being planted I grew up with the stuff every where my mum moved to in Africa she planted several moringa plants they then grew into tall trees. It sounds like thunder that must be a comforting sound in the desert. The Spiky acacia reminded me of Kenya, this food forest reminds me of a friends garden I visited as a child in Mombasa Kenya the soil looked dry like that, but all the fruit trees forming an over head canopy looked like paradise.
I love witnessing the evolution of this piece of paradise. Thank you Geoff
amaizing!! hope my farm is going to look like this one day. dessert area of spain, no water no rain. bussy with chickencoop, lots of fun. anyone who wants to help, you are most welcome.
Any update on your farm
@@masad31 it is going great. Little by little
Geoff has planted many seeds but the most important ones are all the seeds he has planted in peoples minds and hearts. 10 years ago most people were not aware of permaculture and now people are doing it all over the world on small and grand scale because of him. Now there have been other people also of course , that have done a great job also, but I would guess the original greening the desert video here on youtube has made a greater worldwide impact than anything else when it comes to informing and inspiring people all over the world.
Amazing. Your work has been most inspiring for me, as I live in a climate almost exactly like this one. We receive roughly six inches of rainfall per year with summer temperatures ranging from 54 to 32ish degrees and no humidity. Heavy alkaline clay soil with sandy patches.Through utilizing my household greywater, captured rain water, and careful site selection/construction I now have pomegranates, citrus, dates, acerola cherry, olives, figs, elderberry, mulberry, argan, tamarind, grapes, and peaches. Pecans, pistachios, almonds, guava, and banana will be going in shortly. Other species include acacia willows (they blew in from somewhere and I now have four mature trees on my property which I frequently cut for mulch), bougainvillea, mondell pine, rosewood, chilean mesquite, escarpment live oak, creeping rosemary, trailing lantana, assorted mints (I grow this in the shade as ground cover), artichokes (they're perennials here), asparagus, arabian jasmine (in the shade), and even rhubarb. My crook neck watermelons took off in the dead of summer in full sun-- the vines covered my whole back yard and they produced heavily.
Our community is quite poor. Many of these plants I started from seeds or cuttings that I scavenged, ordered online, or smuggled across state lines. I hope to one day expand this...pursuit, and do work much like yours. Best wishes x
That is really amazing! It is wonderful to see the land respond to proper management. Thanks for sharing this!
Great update! Your team has accomplished something truly amazing.
Magnificent job! Your work is really inspiring!
Bravo: a true paradise created despite an arid and difficult climate!
Geoff, amazing work you are doing for humanity. Truly beautiful
impressive to see that even with the enormous drought stress and the stress of too many people walking the ground, the system still performs. It seems to function like a local people (children) magnet too.
well just imagine if your natural environment is arid. all you see as far as the eyes can see is just nothing more than arid lands, then you see this tiny plot filled with lots of greenery plants.
it's to us is like seeing a herds of lion in mountainous alps.
Great tour! S much abundance everywhere! Great job friend for your hardwork, and wonderful techniques of bringing permaculture to a school! Exactly the education everyone needs. Thanks for teaching the children.
Looking good! It's definitely evolving.
What a great man! i am from Jordan, how i wish to learn from you.
Respect sir.
Thanks Geoff...this is a wonderful testament to all the work and wonderful dedication you and all have put in.
:-) lovely 😊 I love to see you green all of Africa! And every desert !
Thanks for the tour. Exemplary work being done.
This is a Brilliant update Geoff. Many many thanks from New Zealand
Geoff Lawton great video.
Thank you.
Great work! Hope the local community take this shining example on! Seeing those palms laden with dates makes me want to try growing them in Melb... bit of a stretch of the imagination!
You need a minimum temperature adapted date palm that does not require 40c+ for 2 months, www.daleysfruit.com.au/Honey-Date-Palm-Barhee.htm
Thank you Geoff! Great knowledge!
The temperature differences under the canopy much be very noticeable. If enough neighbors adopted these techniques you could create a microclimate in there area. In the Caribbean we have those spikey trees. The are invasive and very sharp. Getting rid of them has been very difficult.
Thank you SO much for sharing this, I could sit here watching you all day long! It is so important to be the change and prove that it IS possible to green the desert - while it happens to be a paradise!
What a beautiful haven you have created! It's really looking great!
This is excellent Team Lawton! The mixture of life, chaos, limitations and design has created abundance-the exact disruption this little piece of Earth needed :) Great work.
Wow! Been watching it grow. Wonderful!
This is absolutely inspirational!
Fantastic work, Geoff! Keep going.
I can't stop admiring your work, mr. Lawton. This is simply amazing!
I, remenber de first video you uploaded. Of this garden.
And it sounded to me very optimistic.
But now that I, see it looks exactly how you said, it will look like.
Looking good Geoff!
God bless you Geoff
This has been wonderful to watch. The development itself and the involvement of the locals.... inspiring. Thank you for the update
Great to see the progress of the project, thank you Geoff
thanks Geoff.
Fantastic update! It has come so far in the year since I was there
Absolutely amazing, wonderful work done here. Congratulations to everyone in the team :-)
Simply impressive, awesome stuff!
Thank you. It IS hopeful work.
That is awesome, how people can change their reality in such a harsh place. i would just keep record of that imported water to back up its not really a huge consumption. i agree with you if more land were manage by the same principles the aquifers will recharge .. my respects from Monterrey Mexico
Really great to see this taking off Geoff! Keep it up
Great job!
Awesome watching. I see one can inform too
This is awesome idea..i would love to see more ppl do this...a lot of the plants you have named i haven't heard of...Pineapple, sea grapes, coconut & aloe would also do well there.
Sisal works well in very dry climates and once established can harvested for rope twine mats etc
Love from Austin, Geoff! Amazing creation!
It s all look great and green
it is so useful tour , thank you
Geoff, I note from your video that great effort is put into recycling/reusing growing containers. You might be interested to check out what the Lebanon Reforestation Initiative is using to propagate their trees. Specially designed, fully reusable & they find that the design helps a lot with promoting stronger root development. Since you're working in the region, might be worth a look. An excellent way to eliminate single use plastic, simultaneously lowering costs.
Your work inspired me
really enjoyed the tour cheers geoff!
Inspirador Mr. Geoff.. el proyecto es espectacular
It's inspiring to see how you've transformed pretty much nothing into something meaningful, on multiple scales, establishing a belief-changing perspective, for others to see that with the right kind of attention to understanding how nature works, stress and negative emotions from scarcity can be turned into good feelings and positive emotions through human-nature collaborated abundance :) Thank you for your determination, Geoff! Keep up the amazing work!
OMG I'm a huge fan I'm so glad I've come across your RUclips channel. I would be with with you right now helping if I could.
Surprised and impressed to see and learn about such a project in Jordan. Thank you very Geoff for this video and the efforts. I wonder in which region/area it is in Jordan? I subscribed to your channel and will start to watch the other videos and the website to learn more about it. I will share the video in social media so other Jordanians can see also.
The entire planet should follow those principle to solve the world problems in a garden as Geoff says!
😍😊🌍😁😀💖🤗
Amazing demo site...……...
So inspiring
Hi Geoff! I’ve been watching your RUclips videos for about over a year now. It’s amazing how you transform the desert into the food forest. I’m so inspired by all you do. I just bought a 5+ acres of land on a slope in zone 8a/b with night time temperature 30-40 degrees Fahrenheit. Can I plant those trees that you listed in this video? The soil looks similar to my soil! Thank you so much for what you do!
Thanks for the update on this project I looking for wishing for an update for a while now. Do you plan an update to any of the other Greening the Desert? Like the talk you did with the Jordanian Government.
Hi Perry yes stay tune that one is up next.
It is a Carissa macrocarpa(natal plum), not a dovalis caffra(key apple)@ 6:33
Keep these great videos coming! love them all!
Thank you Lalo you are right.
Amazing work you are doing, Geoff. Well done!
GEOFF YOU GREAT MAN 👍👍👍👍👍MI RESPECT YOU....GOOD SAVE YOU....AY LOVE FROM AZERBAYCAN✋✋✋✋✋✋j
My heart melt when the kittens meowed
I saw a video of a guy using wood chips to create fertile ground for his garden. Had a lot of produce from amongst others citrus fruits and a lot of vegetbables. Also using one plant to protect and nurture another. Through the years he had accumulated 3 feet of fertile earth with wood chips on top. Of course this wasn't in Jordan but in Arizona I believe. Still very dry climate and the only one in his neighbourhood with any green besides some flakes of grass. I don't say you could just transport the same system to Jordan and it would take a few years to produce fertile earth, but just my two cents.
What a great project you and your team at Greening The Desert are doing! Teaching others and showing by demonstrating permaculture techniques, it’s simply amazing. I do have a question and I don’t know if there is an answer for it or not, but if more and more people (in the area there near the Dead Sea) started practicing this style of “regreening” how long before the actual climate would begin to change or would it change at all?
Thank you for putting the names of the trees in the video.
geoff do you already have or can you post a video on constructing a reed bed? thanks! I appreciate all your hard work, we're trying to green a patch in the high desert in california
Om Ah Houm
With the crazy activities that are happening nowadays... this is priceless knowledge and wisdom...
Cheers! May everyone reach their Blissful states, quickly!
Truly an Amazing Garden ! 👌🏻Much love from UK
Great as ever!
Moringa Yah
Your comments re the water are spot on. We need policy change and social understanding re water use and until then it is survival first.
Thanks you🌱 for this video about greening the desert🌱 🌿🍃🌲🌳🌳🌳🌳🌱👍🌳😊🌱🌿🍃🌲🌳🌲🌳🌲🌳
I think you worth a Nobel prize
Geoff, is there any Rosemary growing on the site?
What about caper plants ? They grow very well in my country,Malta. Very drought resistant
Hi Simon the are native here wild and endemic.
Nice ! !
Planty trees 🌱🌿🍃🌲🌳. Save life 🌱🌍🌏🌎🌱🍃🌿🌲🌳👍🌱🌳🌲🌲🌳🌺🌸🌼🌱🍃🌿🌳🌲🌱🌳🕊
great work!
Well done. If you can grow Singapore Daisy, then you would be able to grow pinto peanut which isnt a weed and is beneficial to the soil, microbes and insects.
Hi Reba it would be nice but pinto peanut is not tolerant of the high temperatures and arid conditions.
Thanks.. Geoff🌎
There are ways of pruning olive trees that will greatly reduce the alternance in production. The best working technique is known as poly-conic pruning. It stimulates gowth of olives in lower branches and makes picking easier as well.
Awesome progress! Tweeted via @cecalli_helper. Thank you for all your studies & work, Geoff. RIP Bill. @UN seriously needs to support your work. Shame they don't.
Glad to hear that the long-term vision is to make this a rainfed garden! 20 times your 2000 m² garden area, that's a lot though. For a start: I see that the street outside the main entrance has a light slope to it and is fairly unmaintained. Maybe you can put in curbside runoff harvesting there?
hoped that the video never ended
Against the odds...Very nice 🌎
I'd like to thank you for showing the reality after a hot, dry summer. In Australia, this is what my garden plants (and nursery) looks like too. It can be difficult when you're planting in extreme conditions, and all you see from permaculture sites is "plump greenery" - the natural conclusion, is that you must be doing something wrong. But more often than not, those green sites are located with an excess of natural rainfall, and moderate heat. So the plants really lack for nothing.
A question about the pollarding of the leucaena though - when you prune next, will you be cutting underneath the existing pollard (slightly) or will you be pruning back the new branches, so they branch on the branches, if that makes sense?
Hi Chris we prune the branches back to the base as low as possible right next to the main trunk.
If I've got this right, you cut back the branches as far as you can, but still above the original pollard cut. Thanks Geoff.
What is a reed bed and how can I find out more about it?
the proposis juliflora is a knightmare plant in E. Africa the horn... great nuisance, won't let other plant grow, very deep roots so troublesome to remove
Koshin Garane please read Fred Pearce’s book The New Wild and you will realise that weeds are the saviours of the world and we now have all the evidence. Bill said this 40 years ago and always stuck to it.
Great video, great work there. And God Bless Palestine 🇵🇸🙏❤
Hi Geoff! Did my PDC with you in... 2012 :)
Great work Geoff. What is the purpose of the stones on the stone backed swale? Increased slope? - Topher, online PDC 2015.
Yes, structural. Or swales would be too narrow.
We just had to use the stones some how as there were so many.
Geoff Lawton don't they work as ground cover? Moisture is pretty well retained under rocks, isn't it?
On the compost toilet . . . what do you do with the composted manure?
Hi Paul we put onto the the support specie trees.
I have a composting toilet on my small farm in Africa, and was hoping I could use compost of fruit and nut trees, but it is hard for me to find clear guidance related to safety. The toilet produces beautiful compost, but I have been afraid to use it.
Hi Paul if the compost has been processed at least 10 months it is pretty safe and it is mostly only your family using the toilet and your family consuming the fruit and nuts it is completely safe.
It is probably safe in a much shorter time with many strangers using the toilet but there can be just the odd variation that maybe unforeseen.
I thought human waste was a big no no for compost? What does a compost toilet do to negate whatever harmful bacteria may be present?
Wasn't expecting you here Paul. Hello! I've seen you round