Imagine a garden that is not fighting nature, but working with it. Where most of your time in it is enjoying its beauty, diversity and not to forget food! In fact a garden that cuts out the supermarket and makes eating local food as simple as walking out of your door and selecting what’s in season.
If you’re new to the concept – a forest garden or food forest is nothing to do with gardening in a forest, but creating a multilayered garden that mimics a young woodland but where plants are chosen to maximise the health and productivity of the space.
A forest garden is beautiful and delicious, a polyculture developed in harmony with nature and so, once it is mature, is very low maintenance.
So is this for you? I’m not going to say you’ll get a completely un-biased opinion from us! We’re big fans of forest gardening; for our UK temperate climate it ticks so many boxes. In our damp climate, the land’s natural state is woodland. In fact if left alone, ground will slowly revert to woodland. Because of this the further we try to maintain land from this natural state – the more work it takes to maintain.
Here are a few bullet points that makes us such enthusiasts of food forests. They are:
- labour saving,
- High yielding,
- A relaxing, beautiful space,
- Contain huge biodiversity,
- Locking up carbon – making it kind to the environment,
- Both a source of harvest and income,
Out Forest Garden was first planted in 2014 and is slowly evolving and growing into a place to stimulate all your senses.