Forest Gardens - Mount Elgon Region, Uganda

This project is ending environmental degradation, hunger, and poverty by training farmers in a sustainable agriculture technique called the Forest Garden Approach (FGA). Trees for the Future plants millions of trees with local farmers in Uganda and trains them over a four-year period, teaching them to protect their land and diversify what they grow.

Decades of unsustainable agriculture practices have resulted in degraded and unproductive land; nutrient-scarce food systems; and farming families who are unable to grow and sell enough to meet their most basic needs.

Tree Nation’s project in Uganda will help over 700 farmers and more than 2 million trees will be planted.

Using the Forest Garden Approach in countries like Uganda, this project is proving that agroforestry is a solution to each of these challenges, effectively ending hunger and poverty while restoring the land and environment.

Forest Gardens are made up of thousands of trees and dozens of food and resource crops. Forest Gardens not only sequester carbon but also support biodiversity, improve food access, and provide a reliable income.

This project supports commodity producers in integrating the Forest Garden Approach alongside their commodity crop, diversifying their food and income sources and reducing pressures on native forest landscapes.

Forest Gardens are, on average, 1 acre in size. One farmer, or farming family, cares for each Forest Garden on their own land. The average Forest Garden has 2,500 trees, most of which are planted in the first or second year along the Forest Garden’s perimeter, which Trees for the Future calls the “Living Fence”. In the third and fourth years, the remaining trees are strategically placed where it will best benefit the farmer’s Forest Garden. On average, a Forest Garden offsets 144.64 metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per acre over 20 years.

By the end of the four-year program, farmers see an average 400% increase in income and more than a 500% increase in access to nutrition. Forest Gardens benefit both the farmer and the land, effectively breaking the cycle of land degradation, hunger, and poverty.

The project not only improves the nutrition of the participating farmers due to increased food diversity, but also allows these farmers to sell food surpluses on local market, making them able to pay for their children's education and other necessary investments to improve their livelihood.