Forest Gardens
Forest Gardens
When we landscape a site we install mulch beds which we plant with fruit trees and fruit bushes following a system called forest gardening, the intention is to create low maintenance fruit bearing area which also provide habitat for wildlife.
Forest gardening is a food production and land management system based on replicating woodland ecosystems, but substituting trees (such as fruit or nut trees), bushes, shrubs, herbs and vegetables which have yields directly useful to humans. By exploiting the premise of companion planting, these can be intermixed to grow on multiple levels in the same area, as do the plants in a forest.
Forest gardening was pioneered by the late Robert Hart. Starting as a relatively conventional smallholder, Robert soon discovered that maintaining large annual vegetable beds, rearing livestock and taking care of an orchard were tasks beyond his strength. However, a small bed of perennial vegetables and herbs they had planted was looking after itself with little intervention.
This led him to evolve the concept of the "forest garden". Based on the observation that the natural forest can be divided into distinct layers or "storeys", he used inter-cropping to develop an existing small orchard of apples and pears into an edible polyculture landscape consisting of seven levels.
The image above shows a forest garden area at the Cherrytree Community Backgreen two years on. The understory is flourishing and we've already had some apples and plenty currants.
See www.edibleforestgardens.com for more information >