Woodland Gardening:

Designing a low-maintenance, sustainable edible woodland garden with fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, vines and perennial vegetables

In a woodland garden everything grows together in a way that is very similar to a natural woodland but with the trees and shrubs all bearing edible crops, and with many different edible herbs and vegetables growing under them. Instead of battling against nature, this is a garden that works in harmony with it.

It is possible to plan out a woodland garden in a space as small as a backyard or as large as a few acres, using the guidelines that nature has shown us, but using species that can provide us with fruits, seeds, leaves, roots and flowers that are delicious and highly nutritious.

When well designed, such a system can:

»» be far more productive than a field of annuals
»» produce a much wider range of foods
»» require far less work
»» require far less inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides
»» provide valuable habitats for wildlife
»» be very pleasing aesthetically.

It all comes down to selecting the right mixture of species. There are over 5,000 species of edible plants that can be grown outdoors in temperate climates and about 2,100 of these can be grown in a woodland so there really is no lack of variety to choose from.