Permaculture blogger Nancy Lowe explains forest gardening.

Have you ever despaired at the amount of work needed to grow food? Forest gardening is an increasingly popular way of creating an edible, yet relatively low-maintenance garden and I’ve just started giving it a go.

The idea is to create a productive garden that closely mimics balanced natural systems. Think of oak woodlands. They’re full of trees, both tall and short, with an understorey of shrubs, wildflowers and creeping ground cover plants and the occasional climbing plant.

That’s a lot of plants. No weeding is needed, no pest control or soil improvement either and if you check the soil, it is rich, moist and looks almost good enough to eat! What’s more, this system is thriving with wildlife. This is a natural system in balance where plants have filled all the available spots and everything is happy to stay just as it is.

Forest gardens, like the one I’m just starting to put together, try to mimic these natural forest systems by filling in all the different canopy layers with plants that are useful to us. They include crops from tall trees, short trees, shrubs, herbs, ground cover and climbing plants. Even root crops can be added in.

And then the system works just like a natural forest – building its own soil through leaf drop in autumn, holding on to moisture because of the humus rich soil, keeping weeds at bay as every spot is filled with useful plants and providing habitat for a broad range of wildlife which helps to keep pests in check. Basically, it does a lot of the hard work for you and if planned out carefully can even provide the perfect habitat for your hammock to live so you can lie back, nibbling on overhanging fruits and marveling at what nature is providing.

Choosing Your Plants
Growing this type of garden often means mixing some very familiar crops with some more unusual ones. Lots of familiar fruit crops are ideal for this type of garden – raspberries (below) and black currants are native to woodlands, while fruit trees, such as apples and pears, are also great candidates for the tree layers.

Hazel can make a good addition to the low tree/large shrub layer, providing both nuts and garden canes.

The herb layer can include shade tolerant kitchen herbs such as mint, parsley and chives, while a creeping ground cover can be provided by strawberries, another woodland plant.

For more adventurous forest gardens, a whole host of salad, vegetable and unusual fruiting crops can also be grown. I’ve been reading up on traditional and native perennial vegetables, such as sorrel (below, a zesty leaf crop), salsify (a root crop), bath asparagus (for shoots that make a pretty alternative to asparagus) and sweet cicely (for sweet stems that can be used as a sugar substitute in puddings).

Other forest gardeners are looking to more exotic perennials, such as oca – an Incan root crop, the siberian pea tree – for lentil sized beans growing from a tree, and daylilies – for their edible and very beautiful flowers. These all sound great to experiment with.

You can, of course, also choose plants for use in herbal teas, for their fibre, oil, wood fuel, dye properties or for a whole host of other uses.

Some useful links if you want to find out more include:
The Agroforestry Research Trust – hosts the forest garden network and includes information about plants and temperate forest gardens.
Plants for a Future – a fantastic plant database, including information about edible, medicinal and other uses of over 7000 plants, trees and shrubs.
The forest gardening yahoo group – a place to swap ideas, questions and expertise.

Nancy’s blog is jam-packed with wisdom on sustainable, clever gardening. So get over there right away and read it.