The Forest Garden is a woodland in which everything is edible or useful. Plants are grown using every available space - under the ground, on the ground, as bushes, trees and climbers. It requires minimal maintenance once established as all the plants are perennials or self seed easily and the ground is permenantly covered.
Planting started in the Forest Garden in winter 2004/5, with an area approximately half an acre being planted with fruit trees and fruit bushes. Over the next few months, herbs and ground cover plants such as strawberries were planted. The ground was mulched with cardboard and covered with manure, fermenting cattle fodder (sweetcorn) and straw.
Phase 2 was planted in winter 2005/6, with more fruit trees and bushes being planted and mulched with cardboard, carpet, wood chippings and straw. Many volunteers helped with the planting and mulching.
Phase 3 was been planted in December 2006 as part of The Tree Council's National Tree Week. The Farm received a grant from the Tree Council which enabled another 30 trees to be planted and 33 volunteers helped the planting this time.
Phase 4 was planted in winter 200/8, so now about 2/3rds has fruit trees planted on it. Planting the understory and ground cover continued with the strawberries running, raspberries spreading and herbs self seeding. Cuttings were taken from the now established bushes from phase 1 and 2 and stuck through holes cut in to the carpet in phase 3. At the end of summer, the majority had rooted and were putting on new growth. As always, we had tons of help from volunteers, thanks to them all.
Winter 2008/9 planting will be slightly different. Now we have some established fruit trees, we can take cuttings from them and graft on to root stocks. These will take another year before they can be planted in situ, so phase 5 will be a little longer coming. In the meantime, the other 'layers' of the Forest Garden continue to be planted in the other phases to fill gaps and get the ground covered.
We run a one day Introduction to Edible Forest Gardening course at various times of the year, see the courses and events page.
