Domain 2 · Ecological and Regenerative Practitioners
Dave Jacke
Forest gardening as applied ecosystem design
Dave Jacke helped give temperate-climate forest gardening a rigorous ecological and design foundation. His work matters to me because it treats a forest garden not as a fashionable collection of edible plants, but as a deliberately designed ecosystem that changes through time.
Distinctive contribution
With Eric Toensmeier, Jacke produced the two-volume Edible Forest Gardens. The work connects forest ecology with practical design, examining vegetation layers, succession, niches, disturbance, guilds, soil development, resource partitioning and the behaviour of whole plant communities. Its ambition is not to copy a forest’s appearance but to understand and design with forest functions.
Key drivers and guiding ideas
Jacke’s recurring drivers include ecosystem mimicry, functional diversity, succession and conscious co-creation with living processes. A forest garden is a perennial polyculture of multipurpose organisms whose relationships are as important as the species list. The designer therefore works in time as well as space, anticipating establishment, transition, maturity and management.
Mark’s interpretation
Influence on my work
Jacke was a direct source for my Ayurvedic Food Forest. His emphasis on ecosystem mimicry helped move the design beyond assembling medicinal and edible species. It required me to ask how layers, roots, light, fertility, water, pollinators and human harvesting would interact. That shift from collection to community is one of the most important steps in food-forest design.
My critical reading
The ecological depth of Jacke’s work can encourage overly elaborate plans. Living systems will always revise the drawing. The practical lesson is to use ecological knowledge to make better starting decisions, establish feedback and then manage succession intelligently rather than attempt to specify every mature relationship in advance.