Forest Gardens - Part 2 - Pics and Links

Here's a few photos of a some great examples of forest gardening, first the amazing roof garden at RISC, really well documented here: RISC:

The RISC garden is especially amazing because it's on a roof! Yes, everything is planted in just two foot of soil... here's a link to the list of plants in the garden: RISC plants - its a useful list of forest garden plants in itself.

Here's the RISC roof garden not long after planting

Detail of the planting and the different path materials: woodchip and reclaimed slabs

Loads of understory variety, including medicinals etc

Another forest garden, this one's at Seaford on the South Coast, planted and developed by Bryn Thomas

This one's at the Peat Centre

And this is Chris Dixon's project in Wales; more of an example of natural regeneration than of forest gardening but a fascinating project

Finally for now, here's a link to Geoff Lawton's site - lots of great free stuff on forest gardening and also on Permaculture in general: Geoff Lawton.

FOREST GARDENS - FOOD FOR THE FUTURE!

If there's one idea that will help people everywhere to ride out whatever environmental, social, health and financial storms are gathering, it's Forest Gardening - why? because it's...

• a way of growing food, AND medicinals, materials in patterns that mimic Nature and support the environment
• Forest Gardens are drought, flood, pest and disease resistant
• they produce a wide range of food with a minimum of energy input
• they produce a succession of varied yields
• they're friendly to the environment, bees, birds and build healthy, dynamic soil
• the principles work whether you have a tiny town garden, an allotment or a hillside
• they're four dimensional, rather than two dimensional

  

  The layers of the forest, and what's going on underground

The illustration is from the main reference work for Forest Gardening, "Edible Forest Gardens", by Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier, and it shows the basic idea beautifully. The trees and plants copy the layers you would find in woodland that had generated all on its own: tall trees, smaller trees, shrubs, bushes, herbs, a ground layer, roots, mycelium and maybe some climbing plants and an emergent layer.
THE REALLY IMPORTANT STUFF IS GOING ON UNDERGROUND
People are often surprised to find out that fruit trees aren't all that deep rooted. The roots of the pear tree in the illustration are mainly shallow for feeding and sharing with other plants with a few deeper tap roots. Compare that with horseradish roots which can go sixteen foot down into the ground. This is really crucial to the forest system, those deep roots bring up nutrients that would otherwise be unavailable. We can chop up the foliage of horseradish and other similar plants like comfrey and use them to feed and mulch other plants wherever they need it, being perennial, it just grows back.

The unremarkable foliage of horseradish and its very remarkable, sixteen foot deep roots

FOREST: NO WASTE, NO ENERGY REQUIREMENT
If you have a look at some natural woodland, (we're very lucky here in Perth, Scotland to have Kinnoull Hill on our doorstep) you won't find a skip full of stuff that the forest didn't need, or plastic packaging left from stuff it bought. Everything is generated on the spot, and regenerated using dead and decaying plants. There's no electricity cable, the energy requirement comes from the Sun, wind, rain, and animals passing through. Compare this with industrial agriculture:

...it takes a tremendous amount of energy to produce a crop of just one plant, because that's not what Nature wants to do. It uses fossil fuel in each and every process, from the manufacture of those enormous machines through to harvest,  and tons of packaging too. Not only that, annual ploughing destroys soil fertility.
MORE SOON! It's a huge topic but it's relevant to all my gardening clients and friends and I wanted to get started on spreading the word.

Back at the eco-edge!

I've just started giving a client a hand with his allotment in Dundee, and what a brilliant experience it's proving to be.

Brilliant Scottish inventiveness to be seen in shed construction here

There's about 80 allotments on the site, all of a decent size. A feature that stands out straight away is the wild variety of sheds, clad with everything from reclaimed wood to floor tiles, like finding yourself at the centre of the recycleverse. The site has been established for a long time with a kind of leaning towards annual veg crops and less in the way of fruit or perennials. My client wants to develop his permaculture and forest gardens ideas, slightly against the grain of the site committee, but all very dear to me and Ruth of course.

It's wonderful for us to find that all the practical experience we have gained in our eco travels can now be put to good use at what, to me, is the real cutting eco-edge, helping people to grow food in a sustainable way right in the heart of the city. We can tell people what works and what doesn't work, how to make the most of your time, energy and money, give tried and tested tips on keeping pests at bay, drop the odd idea into the process that may open a whole new understanding of working with Nature, and just put in a bit of vital energy when you're faced with a daunting amount of work at the beginning of a project. I'm looking forward to seeing the plot here flourishing into multi layered, natural abundance.

A less regimented style on one of the other Dundee plots, rather frowned on by the comittee...

Get gardening!

The weather seems to have changed here overnight. The snow and ice have vanished and we've had some wonderful weather, time to get gardening again...

This is a garden I'm helping with in a village just outside Perth. My client there already has lots of great stuff on the go but just wanted a bit of help and advice to develop what she's doing further. I've been explaining a few of the ideas of working with Nature which Ruth and I have seen work so well during our eco travels: biodynamics, forest gardening and permaculture. It's brilliant that these can be applied at all scales - if it works for a farm it will work in your garden.

One area we are going to develop is the section down by the wheelbarrow in the photo above. This looks like a prime area to me, it gets plenty of light and has a handy stretch of fence to support climbing plants. We've started a narrow no-dig bed there for peas and beans. There's room for a fruit tree or two, I suggested planting a couple of nut trees further along as well. (I think nut trees will become more and more important at all scales as we move away from mono-culture grains through choice and necessity...) I've suggested that the area around the trees will be perfect for perennials such as herbs and fruit bushes, making a mini forest garden effectively.
Finally, I've been meaning to post up this photo of Ruth with a giant parsnip back at Barmolloch for ages.

It's always great to have Ruth on hand for advice. She's the one who does all the reading; she'll read three or four books about a plant before growing it, taking a kind of average of all the information and mixing that with her own intuition. Whereas for me, it's no doubt a man thing, but reading a book or a manual is absolutely the last resort...