Focus On... Forest Gardening

Want the most sustainable harvests, regardless of garden size? Lucy Chamberlain shows you how easy it can be to create a canopy of crops with forest-based growing

- Lucy Chamberlain

FRUIT and veg gardens don’t need to consist of regimental rows of crops with bare earth in between. Imagine walking in a small woodland glade plucking nuts, berries and herbs – that’s the essence of forest gardening, and it sounds heavenly to me. This kind of gardening is a lowmaintenance agroforestry system based on woodland ecosystems; key planting elements are fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, vines and perennial vegetables. And the great news is that we can all enjoy the benefits of glade growing.

The concept of this growing method evolved in millennia past alongside the ecosystem, but the idea of using it as a way to cultivate crops was pioneered by Robert Hart in the 1970s, and Martin Crawford since the 1990s. It’s an organic, low-impact method that looks towards the dynamics of a forest in order to utilise numerous growing ‘zones’.

These zones include tall upper tree canopies, understorey groundcover, and a collection of areas in between (see my checklist on page 22). Once established, the effort needed to maintain a forest garden is minimal – very little irrigation, fertilisers or human intervention is required. And no, you don’t need much space for a forest garden, either.

“This is a low-impact, organic growing method”

Plants are carefully planted to coexist in harmony. Nitrogen-fixing trees and shrubs (alder and elaeagnus), plus deep-rooted crops such as comfrey and horseradish, help to draw nutrients into the leaf litter layer; these are broken down and utilised by crops such as currants, raspberries and blackberries.