Community Forest Garden. 2012 to 2022


 Debbie and I started volunteering at a forest garden near Lancaster around 2008 when I realised that this kind of gardening was that I had been instinctively working towards for the previous 25 years. It works with nature rather than constantly fighting against her and provides food, space for wildlife and beautiful place to spend time and experiment. 

By 2011 we'd enrolled on all Permaculture design course and needed a design to work on. We'd been volunteering locally with incredible edible and a piece of land became available to create a forest garden in Prestwich. This became our design and we started work in early 2012 with an enthusiastic bunch of volunteers and £100 to spend on fruit trees.





The land is owned by the council who were happy for us to look after it. It was previously part of a farm but hadn't been touched for years and was mostly brambles and nettles.



We spent the first year clearing the space, laying out paths and planting anything we could get our hands on. The volunteers donated surplus plants as did local garden centres so we were off to a good start.



We held open days to let the local community know what we were doing and these proved popular and got people interested.



Volunteer days were social events from the start, we shared food and herbal teas from the garden. We knew it would be difficult to keep interest going in the early stages as a forest garden takes a few years to establish but people enjoyed coming, especially the social side.


After about 4 years we applied to be a "Land learner" with the Permaculture association with a view to becoming a "Land centre". This is a demonstration site to showcase permaculture in action. The assessor said we could skip the "learner" stage as we seemed to know what we were doing and we were granted "Land centre" status. This has put us on the Permaculture map and has resulted in many visitors coming to the garden.


The garden improved year on year as trees and shrubs became established,
 children especially love exploring the nooks and crannies looking for fruit to pick.










There have been times during the last 10 years when we've struggled to give much time to the garden: we've been looking after my ailing parents whist holding down full time jobs. But the beauty of the forest garden is that it's extremely low maintenance and can be left to fend for itself for periods of time. 
Times move on, my parents have sadly now passed, we've retired from work and have a new volunteer in our 3 year old granddaughter, Elodie.






Volunteers have come and gone as happens in all voluntary organisations but we've got people who have been with us from day one and new people have joined us.
We're very much looking forward to the next 10 years in our beautiful space.







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