Forest Gardens

[northmetking]

Has anyone grown a forest garden in your woodland ? It's something we'd love to try, and wondered if any of you have any success stories (or failure stories)....

[rogerspianocat]

I wanted to, but decided against it because I felt that you really need to attend to it pretty much on a daily basis, and I get to my wood twice a week. I'd quite like to do it in the back garden!

[splodger]

we have chickens up our woods and a big veggie patch - amongst other things oh and we have a big greenhouse

but my dad is retired and goes there everyday without fail - so looking after everything is not so much of a problem

i try and go there about 4 times a week - to give him a hand with things - and if i lived closer i would be there every day too

[tracy]

We do need to be a little careful about what we put in the woodland. Change of use laws - as well as changing the soil, accidentally introducing invasive species etc - especially in an ancient woodland could be damaging. They are precious and if everyone decided to do it we would lose lots of woodland!

On the other hand there are loads of things we can eat that we will find in woodland and would be ok, eg Hazel nuts, Rowan leaves, nettles etc! They don't need looking after!

[splodger]

tracy i agree

i should have stated in my previous post that our veg patch and greenhouse area are at the edge of the woodland and sited on old trackways that were created years before hand (i believe one section is actually classed as brown field)

and nothing we have on site contravenes forestry guidelines - in fact we have regular visits and the inspectors haven't found reason to complain or object so far

we are also very conscious about keeping and a maintaining suitable environment for the wildlife

the one thing we always struggle with is rhoddy clearance

[wrekin]

What do people think about the kinds of permaculture woodland management advocated by Ben Law? (eg he plants native fruit trees on the ride edges.)

http://www.ben-law.co.uk/books.html#Woodland%20Way

[Meadowcopse]

My plot is still registered as agricultural land with DEFRA and almost anything approximating agriculture / horticulture is permitted as it is just under 1 ha and Natural England aren't too bothered either.

As I haven't finished my planting scheme yet (and haven't bothered with FC grant or Woodland Trust / FC grant... for various reasons), it's pretty much a blank canvas.

It's arguably lowland meadow - an important habitat type in it's own right (I have had some liaison with The Grasslands Trust) - the reality is that it is a marginal field cut off from it's larger part by a by-pass and roughly triangular.

The narrowest point is being filled with native alder, birch, ash and oak of local provenance for eventual varied coppicing, this then opens out a bit onto hazel with a couple of walnut trees, then wider spacing again to a heritage apple orchard, a few pear trees and black mulberry and quince into open grassland, finally bounded by a wide woodland strip of native broadleaf trees that include 5 elms as part of The Great British Elm Experiment and a few black poplars...

The edges of the grass / orchard have a couple of beds for nursery stock, herbs and veg.

I've looked at a few 'Forest Garden' books, but none have really leapt out at me as a 'must buy' despite quite interesting and informative content.

The important thing is to define 'forest' and 'garden' and how one should merge the two.

Height, spacing and shade are going to be a big influence - and then the choice of what is grown, as in trees, edibles, herbs and ornament...

[northmetking]

One of the woods that we went to look at recently actually suggests the creation of a forest garden in the blurb, which is one of the things that got us thinking about it:

http://www.woodlands.co.uk/buying-a-wood/devon/waterhouse-wood/

[tracy]

Looks like a nice woodland!

[northmetking]

It was stunning, absolutely beautiful, but the access wasn't great and roughly half of it is on a very steep slope, which isn't really what we want. If we were doing this 10 years ago and my wife didn't have back problems, it may have been perfect, and would have been ok if there were another couple of acres of more level woodland to work with, but we would essentially have to write off half the woodland, and we can't afford to do that, unfortunately.