The Fruitful Forest Garden Nursery

Community:  an interacting population of various kinds of individuals (such as species) in a common location.

What do we see when we think of a forest? What if we take a minute now to close our eyes and picture ourself in our favourite forest or woodland. What are the sights, sounds and smells that we experience? What are the textures? What would we taste? How does this scene change as time passes and the seasons evolve?

When I picture my local woodland I see a biodiverse mix of canopy trees, majestic beeches where my son likes to climb, sliver birches, hazels and ash. Below these are shrubs, elder, bracken, ferns and wild raspberries. The forest floor is carpeted with beech masts, fallen twigs and leaves, through which grow periwinkles, nettles, dogs mercury and wild strawberries. Ivy, honeysuckle and brambles (blackberries) scramble over hedges and up trees. If I time it well after a rainfall there will be chanterelles, porcini and other fungi fruiting in the undergrowth. Every physical and temporal niche has a form of vegetation that it calls home.

If I look closer I will start to see and hear the vast variety of birdlife and insects that call the forest home. The woodlice under fallen logs, the ladybirds in the tree bark, the birds feasting on the hedgerows and dispersing seeds from the fruit. I might nibble on the miners lettuce (Siberian purslane) covering the forest floor, or taste the sweet tang of the blackberries, or smell the aromatic anise of Sweet Cicely.

My virtual stroll through the forest takes me into the heart of a tightly woven, interdependent and highly productive community. As humans we don’t live in monocultures with teachers in one village, carpenters in another and medics in another. We all live together and in a functional community everyone has a role to play and a contribution to make. So it is in a forest, or any natural ecosystem. Every component performs a function that is for the benefit of the whole. The tree provides habitat for birds and insects, and their fallen leaves build soil. The tree canopy harvests water and nutrient from the air and feeds it to the soil. The fungi, bacterial and soil life converts the vegetation back to soil to feed the vegetation. The birds eat pests, fertilise the ground with their droppings and disperse seeds. Spring flowering plants, such as bluebells and wild garlic, flower early before the trees leaf out and cast shade across the forest floor. It is this interconnected, 4 dimensional web of cooperation that we wish to emulate in a forest garden.

So where to start? One guild at a time! Suppose you have a traditional suburban garden of a lawn with a nice tidy herbaceous border. You like the idea of forest garden but don’t want to shock the neighbours, and you like your garden tidy. No problem. Where you might in the past have created an ornamental island bed in your lawn you now create a beautiful ornamental edible bed in your lawn. You plant a fruit or nut tree and surround it with pretty functional plants.

Let’s start with an apple tree as they have beautiful blossom in springtime, colourful fruit in autumn and you can eat and/or store your fruit through the winter time. We could add some soft fruit, such as red and black currants, gooseberries and strawberries. And let’s not forget our vegetables. Perennial vegetables are so much easier to grow than annuals, not to mention more nutritious, so let’s add some perennial kale into the mix.

What do we need to ensure our fruit trees and shrubs produces bountiful harvests for us? They needs pollinators, water, sunlight to ripen and nutrients from the soil. Apple trees suffer greatly from competition from grass and can be susceptible to pests and disease. So how do we create the perfect community for our apple tree? We need the plant equivalent of a village of teachers, doctors, plumbers etc. In Permaculture circles we call these communities a guild.

Let’s create our first apple tree guild. First off we will create a garden bed and plant our apple tree. We then choose plants that support the main tree. For example, we might plant comfrey, which is known as a dynamic accumulator, or soil builder. Comfrey has a very deep tap root, like dandelions and docks, and is able to access nutrients deep in the soil that aren’t accessible to shallow rooted plants. We can then “chop and drop” the comfrey, ie cut back the comfrey and spread the leaves around the base of the fruit tree as a mulch to prevent grass and weeds, and the deeply mined nutrients in the leaves are released back into the soil, feeding the tree essential nutrients. If we choose a comfrey that flowers at the same time as the tree it will also attract pollinators to encourage pollination and the setting of fruit. Other plants that would flower at a similar time and attract pollinators include daffodils, spring bulbs, yarrow and sweet cicely.

Whilst wanting to attract pollinating and other beneficial insects we also want to deter and repel pests that can hamper our crops. To do this we can use aromatic and strong smelling plants to camouflage our precious crops from the pests. These often include herbs such as wild celery, lemon balm, rosemary and sage. Not only will these plants deter pests but we can use them to add depth of flavour to our cooking, make herbal and medicinal teas and add their deliciously sweet flowers to salads (or browse them whilst gardening as I often do!).

Members of the allium family, such as perennial onions, leeks and garlics, not only camouflage our crops, but provide onions for the kitchen table. The alliums and aromatics also impart a variety of antiseptic and antiviral nutrients into the soil and the mycelium food web. This helps to protect the rest of the community from disease such as apple scab and canker.

We can include roots and tubers in our mini forest garden, such as Jerusalem artichokes that provide height, wind protection and sunflower like seeds before producing nutty starchy tubers in late winter. This structure can be used by climbers and scramblers, like nasturtiums, to climb up. Nasturtiums fulfil so many roles in a forest garden guild. They attract blackfly away from valuable crops, provide amazing forage for bees and other insects, provide great weed suppressing ground cover and create a glorious display of colour in any garden border. And if all that wasn’t enough the leaves and flowers add a great peppery relish to any salad and the pickled seeds make a great alternative to capers.

Now that you have one lush, abundant, highly decorative food growing bed in your garden you’re going to want more and more! Each guild can be designed in a similar way. Decide on a canopy tree and work your way down through the layers and across the functions, choosing your favourite fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers. The combinations are endless and you choose the plants that you want in your garden. As your garden vegetation grows in biodiversity so will the wildlife that visits you.

If this is your first venture into forest garden guilds and it all seems a bit overwhelming, you’re welcome to contact me and I’d be happy to help you create a guild that works for you and your garden.