Robert Hart, an Englishman (1913-2000) has sometimes been credited with developing the concept, but he in turn was inspired by others before, primarily written works describing systems in Japan, Sri Lanka and Kerala in India. However human agro-ecology systems have been existent in many other traditional societies such as Java, Bali, central and south America, New Guinea. The forest garden concept has been popularized recently through Permaculture, Regenerative Agriculture, Agroecology, and similar systemic approaches to agriculture and food production. Considering this long historical existence of food forests, there are thousands of food forests throughout the world. The popularity has been increased by the recognition of the patterns that are similar in many differently named successful sustainable tree-based production systems.