How to Make a Forest Garden

Front Cover
Permanent Publications, 2002 - Gardening - 168 pages

A forest garden is a food-producing garden, based on the model of a natural woodland or forest. It is made up of fruit and nut trees, fruit bushes, perennial vegetables and herbs. It can be tailored to fit any space, from a tiny urban back yard to a large rural garden.

A close copy of a natural ecosystem, it is perhaps the most ecologically friendly way of gardening open to us.

It is also a low-maintenance way of gardening. Once established there is none of the digging, sowing, planting out and hoeing of the conventional kitchen garden. The main task is picking up the produce!

This highly practical, yet inspiring book gives you everything you need to know in order to create a beautiful and productive forest garden,
including

  • Basic principles

  • Layout

  • How to choose plants

  • Details of over one hundred plants, from apples to mushrooms

  • the most comprehensive account of perennial and self-seeding vegetables in print

  • A step-by-step guide to creating your garden

  • Full details of an example garden, and pictures of many more

Forest gardening is an important element of permaculture. This book explains in detail permaculture design for temperate climates and contains much of interest for anybody wanting to introduce sustainable practices into their garden.

 

Selected pages

Contents

CHAPTER
1
CHAPTER
13
CHAPTER 3
25
CHAPTER 4
45
CHAPTER 5
55
CHAPTER 8
99
CHAPTER 9
115
CHAPTER 10
135
Weights and Measures
150
99
159
Copyright

Common terms and phrases

allelopathic annual vegetables apples autumn blackcurrants Britain bush canopy cherries cherry plum climate clubroot comfrey companion planting compost cooking coppiced cordons crop cultivated disease dwarfing early eaten edge edible elder espalier especially fat hen fertility flavour flowers forest garden fruit trees full Sun gooseberries green ground grow grown harvesting hazels hedge herbs kind kiwi leaf leaves legumes less light manure mature metres microclimate mulch native nitrogen nursery nuts onions orchards organic matter ornamental pears perennial plants perennial vegetables permaculture pests picking plant nutrients plums pollination possible problem produce pruning ramsons raspberries ripen roots rootstock salad sea beet sea kale season seed self-fertile self-seed self-seeders shrub layer shrubs slugs soft fruit soil space spinach spring suitable summer tall taste trees and shrubs usually varieties vegetable layer vigorous wall weeds Welsh onion wild plants wildlife wind windbreak winter wood woodland yield

References to this book

About the author (2002)

Patrick Whitefield (1949 - 2015) was an early pioneer of permaculture, adapting Bill Mollison's teachings with a strong Southern Hemisphere bias to the cooler, maritime climate of the British Isles. He wrote a number of seminal books, including Permaculture in a Nutshell (1993), How to Make a Forest Garden (1996), The Living Landscape (2009), How To Read the Landscape (2014) and his magnum opus, The Earth Care Manual (2004), an authoritative resource on practical, tested, cool temperate permaculture. Patrick appeared in several BBC TV programmes, popular gardening videos, and taught many permaculture and other practical courses, throughout the UK.

Bibliographic information

TitleHow to Make a Forest Garden
AuthorPatrick Whitefield
Editionillustrated, revised
PublisherPermanent Publications, 2002
ISBN1856230082, 9781856230087
Length168 pages
Subjects › 

Gardening / General
Gardening / Organic
Gardening / Shade
Gardening / Techniques
Gardening / Trees
  
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