Forest Gardening

Forest Gardening is a much older way of getting what we need from our local landscape than agriculture and very sensible in an area like Perth, much of which is naturally woodland. You can see how quickly the area to the back of the farm which was cut down to the ground about ten years ago has reverted to this natural state with trees (including oak), bushes, shrubs, herbs - all the woodland layers. The last thing the land here wants to grow is patches of just one crop... which is why it's comparatively hard work to grow potatoes...

The woodland layers which we mimic in Forest Gardening. (This illustration misses out one important layer - the world of fungi and mycelium) 

You can see how so many plants have appeared in the woodland area all by themselves. We get loads of brilliant yields, brambles, elderflowers and berries, and rosehips for a start and at least a dozen herbs. There's also important plants for the bees, like ivy, which flowers very late in the season. These are brilliant yields but we've started to tweak this area so as to get a wider range of produce for a larger part of the year, starting by planting some nut trees.

Brilliant illustration shows how the roots of different plants intermingle. Trees can be surprisingly shallow rooted while some of the herbs can be very deep rooted indeed...

...like this horseradish, whose roots can go down sixteen foot into the ground