Focus on… Forest gardening
FRUIT and vegetable gardens don’t need to consist of regimental rows of crops with bare earth in between. Imagine walking through a small woodland glade plucking nuts, berries and herbs – that’s the essence of forest gardening, and it sounds pretty heavenly to me.
Forest gardening is a low-maintenance, plant-based agroforestry system based on woodland ecosystems, incorporating fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, vines and perennial vegetables. In this article I explain how you can 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 a low-impact, organic method that looks towards the dynamics of a forest to utilise numerous growing ‘zones’.
“This is a low-impact, organic growing method”
These zones include tall upper tree canopies, understorey ground cover and a collection
