This week, as I am sitting in my writing hut nestled at the back of my garden with the door open, sun warming the air and spring birdsong filling my ears, I am going to share another passion with you.

My forest garden project.

A few years ago, we wanted to move to a smaller house with land so I could grow more fruit trees. While we were searching and waiting for finances to work out, I researched growing fruit trees and somehow along the way I stumbled into Martin Crawford’s Forest Garden. Not literally but on youtube. 

I have been through some large mindset shifts as I’ve learned to observe and not interfere. Some habits have been hard to leave behind such as removing seed heads from flowers and cutting down dead stalks in the autumn.

But the benefits outweigh the tidy garden mentality. Birds and insects have feasted on the seed heads and there is a sculptural beauty to tall dry stalks especially when it snows.

In the book - ‘the garden of equal delights,’ Anni Kelsie writes,

“Choosing to do less is crucial because it allows complexity to evolve. The forest gardener and forest garden evolve together. So loosen up, lighten up, give your garden some space, some freedom, some independence, some respect, some credit.”

My husband and I are certainly evolving as we change the look and feel of the little piece of land in our care.

I have learned so much about plants, their needs, how they support each other, how digging the soil destroys networks of mycelium which connects trees and plants and moves nutrients around the garden where it is needed. The garden knows best.

Discovering how many flowers and ‘weeds’ are beneficial to other plants and how many are edible has been an awesome journey. Did you know how fresh, crunchy, and tasty a dahlia bulb is? How delicious, pretty and nutritious a day lily flower is in a mixed salad? Or how beneficial nettle and mint tea is for your health? 

We continue to only mow pathways through the ‘lawn’ creating miniature meadows which are filling with more wildflowers every year, attracting more insects and more birds. My husband was delighted to find a glorious wasp spider last summer in the long grass. It’s favourite food, a grasshopper, hung from the web. If we had a ‘lawn’ this spider wouldn’t have a home. 

We were quite shocked when listening to the audio version of ‘In The Garden Jungle,’ where Dave Goulson dedicates a whole chapter to lawns. It’s quite scary how much damage is done to wildlife and the soil just to have pieces of lifeless green to sit on occasionally, especially if ‘lawn contractors’ are involved with their myriad of chemicals. But people like lawns so Dave Goulson suggests leaving one section untouched, just mow this patch once in late June or July and given time the meadow flowers will grow and thrive, allowing insects to scurry and feed the birds, bats, and moles, and allowing the beetles that keep slugs in check to have a home so they can do their job. 

A Forest Garden has no bare soil as bare soil wastes nutrients, dries up, cracks, and invites unwanted plants therefore most vegetables in a Forest Garden are perennials. This means our approach to growing annuals has needed to change and we now use a raised bed, no-dig method.

Perennial vegetables give back to the soil more than they take, they are more nutritious than annuals, share their nutrients with other plants, are more disease resistant and cope better with extremes of weather. Once established they do not need watering, hoeing around, or pulling out each year so they do not disrupt the mycelium. Of course, there are perennial roots crops, some of which I have planted and these will need pulling up to harvest, but as some of the ‘crop’ is left in for the next year it’s less work than having to weed and prepare a bed for annuals.

They also take a few years to establish so I am learning to be patient.

I have always loved herbs and berries and had several types of berry bushes and large clumps of herbs when we began the project. Now, though, I let them straggle and spread and I have planted a wider range of berry plants, some I’d never heard of such as Chokeberry and June berry. Some I am still searching for. 

“Food diversity is good for wildlife, soil, the environment and people.”

Martin Crawford Creating a Forest Garden 2014

Our forest garden has a long way to go but already we have more insects and birds frequenting and inhabiting the garden. The trees and bushes are growing with my understanding of their needs and we spend more time sitting, listening, observing, and being in the garden than ever before.

I am also eating a more diverse range of flowers, leaves and shoots.

And I love sitting in my writing hut and looking out at the baby forest garden, imagining what it will look, smell, sound, taste, and feel like when it is fully grown.