I am the coordinator of 'Traditional Fruits of Mugla: cultural heritage, database and conservation project'. I have been researching and working on dissemination and conservation of traditional fruit varieties in the Mugla Region since 2006.

Although i had been receiving pieces of information about permaculture in the last 3 years i got the idea that it was traditional knowledge packaged for the westerners. I hadn't comprehended exactly what it was and its potential. When we got to the stage in our project that it was time to set up a conservation garden with the traditional fruit variety saplings we had propagated i found out that Bill Mollison and Geoff Lawton were giving a PDC course in Istanbul and thought this was a good chance to find out what it exactly was about and hoped it would help us with our conservation garden. I got more than i expected from the course and am terminally infected by the permaculture virus :)

Finally we (Fruit Heritage Working Group) have found a small patch of land, belonging to a foundation, on which we have started planting some of our saplings. We have been collecting useful/edible plants from the wild and planting them among the fruit trees and other wild trees already existing on the land. The aim is to create a sustainable and productive example of an edible food forest.