• I am Nature Works (Garden) on internet
• Subscribe to my YouTube channel!

Short bio & motivations!

• Interested in engaging with ecological & climate emergency in 2012
• Bought Martin Crawford's ‘Creating a Forest Garden’
• Moved to West Wales farmhouse in 2015
• Forest garden on 3 acres of hillside

• Whole course based on idea that everyone can contribute
• No matter how much space you have
• You can create a functioning, edible ecosystem

• Backyard forest, term implies small forest garden
• Most people have yards, not acres!
• I use terms interchangeably
• Butterfly is Small Tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae)
• Flower is Red Valerian (Centranthus ruber)
• Defining characteristics: how to tell if you have a forest garden!
• Guidelines are key things to keep in mind

• 3 sections
• First 3 lectures are watching & thinking
• Next 3 are "structural" planting
• Last 2 are filling out the structure
• Possible/desirable to pause between each section

Watching & thinking phase!

This lecture. How meta.

• Surveying tips
• Creating a map
• Making a wishlist
• Moving things around (design)
• Schedule

• Purposefully putting things in the right place!

Structural phase

• Windbreaks
• Dead hedges
• Nurse trees
• Paths! Access & presence.
• Polytunnel, greenhouse, potting shed, cold frames, heated propagation bed

• Get productive, get a harvest!
• Make veg accessible
• Protect your crops
• Suggestions for perennial veg species

• Leaving space for your big trees
• Make sure protected
• How to plant and mulch
• Suggestions for species

Filling out the structure phase

• Ways to clear the ground
• Importance of timing — possibly do it in stages
• Methods: sheet mulch, cardboard mulch, thick grass mulch, log mulch, thick wood chip mulch, deturf

• Squeezing shrubs & ground cover into 1 lecture!
• Basic propagation techniques
• The planting process (bark mulch & temporary mulch)
• Top species

• But where do you begin?
• Photo still & Martin Crawford quote from the short film A forest garden with 500 edible plants could lead to a sustainable future by Thomas Regnault on YouTube

Here are some suggestions on where to begin!

• Totally recommend buying Create a Forest Garden by Martin Crawford
• Forest gardening encompasses many disciplines, ongoing endeavour by many individuals.

• Backyard Forest to emphasise suitability of forest gardening techniques for gardens of all sizes
• Most people have yards, not acres

Work with nature to grow edible crops, emulate woodland edge using perennial & ground cover plants

Key points

• Work with nature: sustainable garden, grow natives, create wildlife habitat
• Edible crops: productive
• Woodland edge: easier to maintain natural balance
• Perennial plants: better for wildlife, less work
• Ground cover plants: permanent living ground cover

• Edible ecosystem—edible crops in a self-sustaining wildlife garden system
• Put your garden in a more natural state
• Central role of nature

Forest garden also known as:

• Food forest
• Edible landscape
• Also look out for edimentals, portmanteau edible+ornamental

• What we have now isn’t working 😞
• Need to show alternatives
• “Once you can grow your own food, you can do anything” — liberating
• Life as the measure
• showyourstripes.info — with matching badge!

• 1.5°C rise by 2026, 6-7°C by 2100
• Photo by Matthew Abbott/The New York Times, labelled for reuse

• BBC Nature crisis: Humans 'threaten 1m species with extinction' 6 May 2019
• 15% species under threat of extinction in UK

Plenty other reasons

• Low maintenance, for when you get older
• Also planting for future generations
• Positive activism
• Health, both physical & mental
• More habitat for wildlife
• Sequester carbon
• More resilient

• Illustration of forest garden in “climax vegetation”
• The further right you go, the more energy, less diversity, more fragility
• Illustration from Martin Crawford’s Creating a Forest Garden

• Mineral accumulators & nitrogen fixers
• Wildlife predators for pests
• Permanent “living mulch” ground cover
• Trees, perennials & soil biota sequester carbon.
• Biodiversity encouraged
• Native plants where possible
• Low maintenance!

• Fruit, nuts, leaves, shoots, roots…
• Herbs, wood, canes, dyes etc
• Multi-layered, using all available space efficiently

• Native plants, as co-evolved
• Wildlife features
• Create ecosystem, create pest control & nutrients

Forest garden layers

1. Canopy
2. Small trees
3. Shrubs
4. Herbaceous perennials
5. Ground cover
6. Climbers
7. Rhizosphere

• Layers are really efficient, in a lazy way!
• My logo is 3 basic layers: canopy, shrubs, herbaceous perennials

Perennial, mostly, plus easy annuals 🙂

• Lower maintenance
• Less soil disturbance
• More efficient
• More nutritious

Some annuals, veg like courgettes & squash, and some that self-seed, eg Marigold and Nasturtium

• Guidelines to bear in mind when designing & creating your Backyard Forest
• Things that have really helped me
• Here for reference, I will revisit them later on in the course

Overview — Definition — Characteristics — Guidelines

• Protect from elements & predators
• Wind
  • Windbreak hedge
  • Nurse tree
  • Dead hedge
• Wind & cold
  • Greenhouse
  • Polytunnel
  • Cold frames
  • Potting shed
  • Heated propagation bed

Also protect some young plants from direct sun.

• Forest garden emulates woodland edge
• Need to make sure enough light gets to understorey
• Plant for final size!
• Check PFAF & RHS for sizes
• More work to move than to plan!
• For cultivated fruit trees, choose right rootstock
• Formula: ¼ to ½ average canopy diameters

Illustration based on Martin Crawford’s Creating a Forest Garden

• Always keep the ground covered
• Annuals, use a mulch. Forest garden, use ground cover plants
• When establishing, use bark or wood chip, plus temporary ground cover
• Wood chip mulch does not rob nitrogen (PDF)!
• I prefer bark but wood chip more available
• Best temporary ground cover in West Wales, White Mustard—buy bulk

• Calculate nutrient budget, Creating a Forest Garden Ch.6
• Have soil test for nutrients & pH, local farmers co-op
• Make sure to have enough “system plants” providing nutrients
• NPK — Nitrogen, Phosphorous, Potassium
• Nitrogen: alder, pea family, Sea Buckthorn, Autumn Olive
• Potassium: comfrey
• Phosphorous: not really provided by plants
• 'Bocking 14', sterile, bred for nutrients
• Dwarf Comfrey, good thick ground cover