Reproduced, with permission, from:
Mathias-Mundy, E., O. Machena, G. McKiernan, and P. Mundy. 1992. Indigenous technical knowledge of private tree management: A bibliographic report. Studies in Technology and Social Change no. 22. Ames, IA: Technology and Social Change Program, Iowa State University.
Tiv compounds (a group of huts housing the extended family in northern Nigeria are surrounded by kitchen gardens, around which often grows a circle of bamboo, papaya or mango trees. This area provides vegetables, fruit such as limes, oranges, and papayas, tobacco, indigo, cotton, and medicinal plants. It symbolizes the privacy of the compound, is important in some rituals and serves as kitchen middens and latrines (Bohannan and Bohannan 1968:15-16, 55-56, 113).
Lagemann (1977:29-30) describes similar features in three villages in Eastern Nigeria. Trees and arable crops are concentrated around the houses and in fields close to the houses, while distant fields have fewer trees. The closer a field is to the house, the more manure, mulch and ashes are applied. However, these features are less distinct in more densely populated areas, where the tree canopy of the outlying fields resembles that in fields near the houses in less densely populated regions (Lagemann 1977:43). This implies that population and tree growth are not necessarily negatively correlated (see also chapter 8).
Chagga homesteads on Kilimanjaro are surrounded by a permanent grove of bananas. The homestead and grove together are called a kihamba. With the development of coffee cultivation, these bananas are often intercropped with coffee. pure stands of bananas or those where bananas predominate usually get more weeding, manuring and mulching with banana litter and other crop refuse than do pure coffee stands (Allan 1965:163-164). The shamba--land cultivated further away from the homestead--is not fertilized but is allowed to lie fallow at intervals.