Traditional farming is monoculture agriculture — large fields of one species of plant — and ecologists have long considered the alternative of polyculture agriculture, which would be more in line with how plants grow naturally. Forest gardening is one such example:
Forest gardening (also known as 3-Dimensional Gardening) is a food production and land management system based on replicating woodland ecosystems, substituting trees (such as fruit or nut trees), bushes, shrubs, herbs and vegetables which have yields directly useful to mankind. By exploiting the premise of companion planting, these can be intermixed to grow on multiple levels in the same area, as do the plants in a forest.
The Bangor Forest Garden includes plants with many different uses:
All plants in the garden have at least one use, which may include: edible parts (leaves, fruits, seeds, roots, flowers); medicinal uses; dyes; fibers; oils; attract beneficial insects such as pest predators or bees; accumulate or fix nutrients to be used as a mulch. Plants may be traditional fruits, nuts or herbs or may come from temperate regions of other continents.
A forest garden arguably requires less labor, as most plants used are perennial or self-seeding annuals, but it obviously does not lend itself to large-scale mechanization.