Introduction

Some of the beautiful clearing in the woodland area of Quarry Farm has the potential to be a nice, sunny, sheltered spot for a forest garden. Hopefully as a community group we can work to create a beautiful and productive space so please get in touch if you're interested in any aspect of this project, be it planning, plant selection, planting, landscaping or just talking about it. Any suggestions are very welcome, especially as for most people the forest garden concept is new and it is an area where experimentation is encouraged and needed.

Overview of Forest Gardening:

The basic design principle of a forest garden is to create a self sustaining system, contrary to labour intensive annual vegetable production, which mimics nature and provides for human needs. This system is also known as Agroforestry and is based around plant associations. To mimic nature, the ecology of the garden must closely follow the environment it is in, i.e. a temperate garden must be created in a temperate climate, however, within this, micro-climates can be established and made use of. Following nature closely also means only using species native to the area; however, to increase diversity for the benefit of the gardeners, non-natives can be carefully selected. The system quickly becomes self sustaining as species are chosen for their longevity (perennials, shrubs, trees) or strong self seeding abilities. A forest is naturally self fertilising as trees and shrubs photosynthesise and bring up water and nutrients from the ground, then return it in ways such as leaf fall in autumn.

Plants such as legumes are also grown in agroforestry to add nitrogen. Unwanted species do not pose much of a problem once planted species at ground level, i.e. clover are established and fallen leaves will form a living mulch. Pests are also kept at a low level by species diversity, and therefore are not allowed to devastate, as they can in conventional horticultural practice and monoculture. This is also achieved by the inclusion of native species, aromatic herbs and flowering plants, which attract pest predators and can literally deter pests by scent. This diversity of species included also means disease is not allowed to take hold of and wreck an entire crop.

A forest garden is so called as it is incorporated into and indeed becomes a forest; the climax community. It comprises of layers and therefore makes maximum use of the space providing a vast range of plant materials. Layers include: the canopy (consisting of large fruit trees); the lower tree layer (smaller fruit and nut trees); the shrub layer (e.g. fruit bushes); the herbaceous layer (including herbs, perennial vegetables and self seeding annuals); ground cover (creeping species); the rhizosphere (root crops; bulbs, tubers etc) and the vertical layer (climbers trained up any vertical surface e.g. a wall or tree trunk). It is the task of the gardeners to try and guide and encourage planting towards the establishment of these layers.