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Jonathan Bates
 Jonathan Bates owns Food Forest Farm Permaculture Nursery ( permaculturenursery.com), a nursery specializing in educational services and useful/edible plant sales. He has been studying, creating, and working with rural and urban gardens in the Connecticut River Valley for over a decade. With a bachelor's degree in biology, and an MA in social ecology from the Institute for Social Ecology, Jonathan loves wild crafting with friends, and working with folks to better the world we live in. He cofounded and is a board member of the Apios Institute, is a teacher at the Yestermorrow Design/Build School, and is a farmer with Nuestras Raices, Inc. He lives in Holyoke, Massachusetts.
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Jonathan's Books
 Two Plant Geeks, One-Tenth of an Acre, and the Making of an Edible Garden Oasis in the CityWhen Eric Toensmeier and Jonathan Bates moved into a duplex in a run-down part of Holyoke, Massachusetts, the tenth-of-an-acre lot was barren ground and bad soil, peppered with broken pieces of concrete, asphalt, and brick. The two friends got to work designing what would become not just another urban farm, but a "permaculture paradise" replete with perennial broccoli, paw paws, bananas, and moringa -- all told, more than two hundred low-maintenance edible plants in an innovative food forest on a small city lot. The garden -- intended to function like a natural ecosystem with the plants themselves providing most of the garden's needs for fertility, pest control, and weed suppression -- also features an edible water garden, a year-round unheated greenhouse, tropical crops, urban poultry, and even silkworms.
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