Fifteen years ago, inspired by the pioneering work of Robert Hart, gardener Martin Crawford moved from conventional organic gardening to creating a forest garden from a bare field. Today his garden is a wonderful example of what can be done with a minimum of effort to produce an abundant crop of unusual edible trees, plants, shrubs and ground cover.
This 49-minute DVD shows how you can apply the principles of forest gardening to spaces big and small. Here Martin takes you through the seasons in his Devon forest garden, and shows you how to plan your planting to mimic the layering, density and diversity of a forest. A wide variety of edible plants can be grown: for example Nepalese raspberry and Siberian purslane, Turkish rocket and good king Henry, lime trees (their leaves make a good salad), bamboo (young shoots are tasty when steamed), snowbell trees for their fruit, and the berries of mulberry or chokeberry.
A Forest Garden Year shows you how to graft an apple tree so that you can crop a variety of apples over several months from one tree, how to grow shitaake mushrooms and perennial leeks, how to pollard and prune, protect crops from wind, attract beneficial insects and increase beneficial minerals in the soil - all while creating a haven for yourself and for wildlife.
Martin Crawford was recently featured in the BBC's Natural World series. He is director of The Agroforestry Research Trust, and has spent over 20 years in organic agriculture and horticulture, including working for the Yarner Trust in North Devon (teaching small-scale organic agriculture); growing food for a small hotel on the Isle of Iona; restoring the walled gardens of a manor house in mid-Devon; and running his own organic market garden and tree nursery in South Devon. He is also a director of 'Gaia', a Trust formed by James Lovelock to further his work.
