Dorset Forest Garden

Our Forest Garden is, on the whole, well protected from the ferocity of the winds we can get on our farm.  We have a tall hedge to the north that cuts out all the cold northerly winds in winter, and the SW prevailing wind has to get through hedges, trees and a bank before it reaches the Forest Garden.

There is one direction, however, that last winter has shown up to be our weak spot. This is from the south.  Our farm slopes due south and gives us a beautiful vista up through a valley in front of us to distant rolling hills.  This however, also equates to a funnelling of southerly winds right at us.  We had already planted a number of trees to the south – rowan, elder and hazel, but not nearly enough to protect our precious garden from the wind.

Having planted up our forest garden, and seeing everything flourishing, we were very aware there is now a need to plan a suitable wind break to the south…

Seeing as we had the space we decided to tackle the winds from outside the forest garden by moving the ageing boundary fencing and at the same time improve mowing access.  This has given us space to add taller, quicker growing, wind tolerant trees positioned to lift the wind over the forest garden without overshadowing or taking nutrients from our edible trees.

Work started this weekend using our trusty old tractor (the OWL) – it has been an invaluable help lifting posts and grown-in fencing and mowing new paths into the now extended forest garden.

This extra space has really changed the feel of the forest garden and improved our access. Over the next week we’ll aim to get all the new trees in position – fingers crossed the weather remains on our side…

Next week we’ll include images showing the improved windbreak and plans showing the new design.

 

Last week was damp and warm which brought about in an explosion of growth in our Forest Garden – including our trees. Our mulching is starting to pay dividends holding back the grass around each tree as grass would reduce tree root development.

This week I’m writing about some of the trees and shrubs in our forest garden that are uncommon in a typical British garden. I’ve included photos of our Szechuan pepper, apricot and Chilean Guava (shown above) as well as a newly imported quince all growing well.

The Szechuan pepper (Zanthoxylum simulans) is a large deciduous shrub growing to 4 m tall by 6m wide.  We’re growing it for its fruit that have a lovely scent and can be used as a black pepper substitute.

There are more and more apricots becoming available to grow in the UK. We’ve chosen a sheltered position with full sun to test out Flavourcot – so far it is romping away!

We are also trying a British bred variety of the Chilean Guava.  James Wong’s comment on this lovely evergreen shrub is – ‘They even come with sweetly scented, powder pink lily-of-the-valley type flowers; they’re such a wonderful addition to any garden and one definitely not to be missed!’  Can’t wait to try the lovely berry sized red fruit!

Another tree fruit I’m really looking forward to sampling is the Quince Isfahan.  It has not been long in this country, but I’ve been told it has some of the best fruit to eat straight from the tree.  The tree itself has beautiful large ornamental buds and I look forward to them turning into quinces later in the year.

This winter has been a busy time in our forest garden.  Many new trees have been planted and now all that hard work is starting to show some rewards.

This is a short post showing just a few images of what is happening to some of the plants in our forest garden this May 2014.

 Our new Service-berries (amalanchier) are already looking stunning in their first season.

We planted a hedge of them just on the edge of our forest garden to create an additional windbreak protection from south westerlies (something we get a lot of).

Their spring foliage has opened this spring in a gorgeous salmon pink at the same time as their pretty white flowers – promising berries this June.  The leaves will turn green as we go into summer and then we look forward to further colour in the autumn.

They are a welcome site everytime I go past them on the track and a real tempter into the forest garden itself.

 

These rowans are a further wind barrier (believe me we do have wind here!) and you may notice the tree closest to the camera is bent in a classic wind worn shape whilst the following trees are more upright.  Our home is just to the left of this picture and protects the higher trees, whilst funnelling the wind at the lower ones.

These trees are in their 4th year and are standing up to the wind well.  They also produce a lot of berries that the birds really appreciate.

 

This frame is within our forest garden.  the bars have a huggel bed at their feet and a series of fruit trees and fruiting climbers are scrambling up each of the bars with herbs at their feet.

It will take a couple of years to really get established, however it is already showing great promise and will become a lovely sheltered space for visitors to come and enjoy some food during their stay.  We aim to build a clay oven here!  Perhaps pizza with one of our artichokes?