Hi everyone,

We will soon be moving to a house with a large, mature deciduous tree in both the backyard and the front yard. My goal is to create a permaculture, no-till food forest in the backyard. My question is this: Should I remove the large mature tree in the backyard? The backyard is north of the house. It's a decent sized backyard, maybe 4000 square feet? My fear is that the tree will shade too much of the yard for all my other plants to grow. Is this bad thinking? Should I instead view the tree as an asset since it's already providing so much shaded ground cover? I'm very new to all of this, so any advice would be greatly appreciated. I do not have pictures at the moment, but I might be able to provide some in the days ahead. Thank you all for any insight you might have.