The inside of Martin Crawford’s Creating a Forest Garden book
You have 3 minutes to advise someone starting a forest garden—what are the most important things?
I happened to be passing Farmyard Nurseries (where I accidentally bought some Mentha longifolia) and met someone who wants to start a forest garden. They wanted some quick advice, time was limited so I wrote this list:
- Buy Creating a Forest Garden by Martin Crawford. Fantastic design manual and reference.
- Use Plants for a Future website for quick reference of species and sizes.
- Plan your canopy layer, to allow enough light for fruiting trees and underplanted crops (about ¼ to ½ of combined tree diameters).
- Windbreak hedges to the final size you want (less maintenance pruning), dramatically improves growth of developing plants.
- Use the Sun Surveyor mobile app to check the sun positions on your plan for different times of the year.
Once you’ve done all that, book a 1 day workshop in West Wales 😉