Forest Gardening at the ART August 29, 2008
Posted by Graham in : Food, Gardens, General, Permaculture , trackbackI had the opportunity a couple of weeks ago to attend a 2-day course on Forest gardening with Martin Crawford at the Agroforestry Research Trust.
The course was professionally delivered by Martin who has encyclopedic knowledge of his subject and was a fantastic experience, re-inspiring my own attempts and forest gardening and showing me some areas i need to focus on more if I want to achieve success. Lunches were provided by his wife Sandra using as much produce from the garden as possible including an amazing array of jams and chutneys, dried fruit and, my favorite, chestnut pate.
Situated in the Dartington Estate near Totnes in Devon, Martin designed and planted his experimental forest garden in the early 90s and now, 15 years after its design, it stands as perhaps one of the important examples of perennial agriculture, and a demonstration that this is a viable and productive method of food production in the cool temeprate climate of Britain.
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Martin Crawford discusses Apricot trees underplanted with comfrey;
The E.F. Schumacher Forest Garden in the Dartington Estate
The Forest garden has always been an iconic feature of permaculture design, and the image of a successful food forest of fruit and nut trees underplanted with successive layers of fruit bushes, climbers, herbs and perennial vegetables, ground cover, roots and tubers and even fungii, has been for many- myself included- a kind of Holy Grail of
the permaculture concept: the designer would become the recliner, lolling in a hammock in a Garden of Eden of her own making, the only concern being Fear of Falling Fruit.
This vision has inspired many to plant fruit trees and other tree crops and encouraged them to seek more diversity in the shrub and herbaceous layer, but for many the end result has been perhaps disappointing: many of the more experimental and exotic plants have failed to produce in our conditions; weeds have defeated the mulch; and, perhaps most common of all, things that seemed to have space when small quickly became over-grown and tangled in each other, leaving not enough light for the ground layers to yield well.
When David Jacke first visited Martin Crawford’s 2-acre Forest Garden near Totnes in Devon, they had already seen many attempts at forest gardening which had been far too densely planted to be very productive, and were pleasantly surprised not to find the same story here:
“Eric [Toensmeier, co-author with David Jacke of Edible Forest Gardens]’s first comment… was ‘Wow! The trees are planted the right distance apart!”
He goes onto say:
“As we learned during our stay, Martin was doing many things right. Our time there proved to be one of the highlights of our trip, and his work remains critical reference for the development of the field”.
Italian Alders with lower branches removed are used to bring nitrogen into the garden without incurring too much shading;
A pollarded large-leafed lime provides an abundance of edible salad leaves.
The concept of Forest Gardening was first brought to the west by Robert Hart who created a Forest Garden in Shropshire. I was lucky enough to visit Robert on my first permaculture Design Course in 1989; Robert died in 2000, but his vision has come a long way since then, with David Jacke’s seminal work representing a sort of coming of age of the concept.
Back in Devon, the work of Martin Crawford doesnt leave the suggestion of a no-work garden: although he told me that it is mainly just him working in the forest garden and nursery, what is on dislay is the result of 15 years dedicated work and research. Nevertheless, the fact that he manages to maintain two acres of such productivity with just 10 days of maintanance a year suggests his method of ground cover plants works well.
This was certainly one of the aspects of his garden that impressed me most. In particular, there are carpets of Nepalese Rasberry Rubus Nepalensis always giving us something to munch on as walked around, and mints, a fantastic pest-insect predator attractant.
Also covered in depth was shleterbelts, fertility in garden- with particular emphases on Nitrogen fixers- and canopy design. We were introduced to a wide range of plant species as well, some of them in fruit while we were in the garden, including Gaultheria Shallon, Cornus kousa chinensis, the Szechuan Pepper tree Zanthoxylum schinifolium and a giant edible bamboo phyllostachys vivax growing over 20 feet high and throwing up edible shoots in the early summer up to 6cms in diameter.
For me, the highlight was actually after the course had finished and myself and another participant had the opportunity to visit Martin’s nut plantation nearby. Here he has 8 acres of well-established sweet
chestnut and walnut covered in nuts, plus a few Monkey Puzzles, Gingko and Holm
Oak.
This was the first time I have actually seen a successful nut orchard, and this, together with the forest garden itself, stands as the most inspiring testimony to the potential of perennial agriculture in this part of the world.
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