introduction to forest gardening

An introduction to the history and techniques of forest gardening for people wishing to learn more and maybe create their own forest garden.

What is a forest garden?

A forest garden or food forest as it's known as in the US is firstly badly named! A dense forest is not somewhere to forage for food as the light levels are usually too low for much to grow beneath the trees. You will find food however around the edges and clearings and this is the model for a forest garden. The correct name might be "woodland edge garden" and It's this environment we want to create for our forest garden. It can be done on any scale from many acres down to a couple of square metres. Or even the back of a tortoise!

Forest gardens are nothing new and there are examples of them in the tropics that have been in the same family for 80 generations! It would provide everything a community needs from food to firewood, medicines and a place to keep livestock. In the west it was probably practiced between the times of hunter gathering and organized farming and until recently has been long forgotten about. 

In the 60's Robert Hart heard about "home gardens" in Kerala in India which were in effect forest gardens and there are about 1.5 million of them! He was fascinated with the concept and decided to see if it works in the temperate climate of the UK. 

It did indeed work and after a few years he wrote a book called Forest gardening which I would recommend everyone reads. From here the movement has spread and there are now thousands of forest gardens as a result of Robert's passion. He died in 2000 but his gardens live on.

So down to the nitty gritty of what a forest garden is:

Graham Burnett, one of Robert's early converts created this diagram to illustrate the layers of a forest garden. Depending on the size one or more layer may be missed out. For example in a small forest garden the larger canopy trees would probably not be appropriate as they would shade everything else out so you can start with a smaller, maybe dwarf fruit tree. But the main thing to take from this is that all the space is used and the ground remains covered. In nature a woodland looks after itself and requires no additional feeding or watering. As plants die back they feed the soil and the lack of bare earth means moisture is retained so it never dries out. We've had 3 or 4 month spells without rain and the garden has remained lush without our help.

I would personally add an eighth layer to this: the fungi that perform an essential role in a forest ecosystem helping break down and decompose dead wood and litter and forming mutual symbioses with plants and trees helping increase water and nutrient uptake. And you can eat them (some only once!) These are absent in farmed systems and it is a subject in it's own right!

This is a 2 square metre patch of my garden I planted up as a micro forest garden last year. It has a plum tree which will be kept compact, a perennial kale which produces more than enough for us, a blueberry, herbs and strawberries along with wildflowers, a grapevine and a small pond.

It is becoming increasingly noted that forest gardens are diversity hot-spots containing many plant species. I've counted more than 50 species in our Prestwich forest garden and I'm sure I've missed a lot. There is also a "diversity of diversity", something we didn't fully appreciate when we started. By this I mean it's not just a place to grow food but to socialise, have a brew and a picnic, meditate, collect willow for basket weaving, bird watch etc. We've had some young film makers in the garden and an author included it in his book about rewilding.

Soil health.