Chestnut trees come very close to representing the archetypal tree crop. They are very long lived; most species of Castanea form very large trees. Examples of Castanea sativa in Italy known to be more than one thousand years old provide annual harvests of delicious, nutritious, easily harvested, easily stored food. Because a mature chestnut orchard resembles a temperate hardwood forest in both structure and function, it provides significant ecological benefits with consequences far beyond merely producing a fruit. The tree offers habitat to myriad animal species and acts as the keystone in its community. It anchors the soils to steep slopes that otherwise would be almost completely unsuitable for any other form of agriculture. The chestnut grove moderates local climate by shading the understory and by transpiring water into the atmosphere. It requires minimal inputs of fertilizers and labor to maintain productivity. The chestnut tree serves as host for symbiotic relationships with fungi, including the choice edible chanterelle and porcini mushrooms whose niches are those of the soil’s great decomposers and recyclers, mobilizing deep soil nutrients and minerals into the humus layers. Agriculture leads to environmental degradation when it depends on the plow to plant annual crops because the plow destroys soil-building processes and causes erosion and the loss of biodiversity. Cropping systems based on perennial plants may mitigate some of the negative ecological impacts of agriculture because in perennial agro-ecosystems, soil-building processes can flourish. Woody plants, especially very long-lived ones like chestnut trees, can be cultivated using methods that mimic natural ecosystems in their stability, productivity and complexity. A grove of ancient chestnut trees resembles an old-growth forest in many ways and it provides ecosystem services with benefits extending past the boundaries of the orchard. The landscape value of the chestnut grove is almost unequalled by that of any other forest type, possibly also because the grove is evocative of a simpler, quieter past, when our relationship with nature was based on the regular cycles of sun and moon and season.