Rebecca Lees offers expert tips on how to design your new forest garden guild.
Having left your ground alone for the past few months, you should now have an idea of what naturally grows in your space over the summer. Each weed will tell you something about your soil, what it lacks or has in abundance.
I gave a workshop a few weeks ago in Oamaru at the Sustainable Living Skills Summer School. One of my participants asked me about stinging nettle. She had it growing everywhere on her plot, and was sick of the sight of it. Weeds like this are difficult to totally eradicate. The first real lesson in forest gardening for me was to love my weeds. Stinging nettle has a raft of benefits in the garden, and in the kitchen. Rather than loathing that particular plant, try loving it instead – find out what benefits it can bring, you may be both surprised and liberated.
If you need to keep weeds under control, snip them off at the top after they flower (flowers will provide insects with food), before setting seed. This will slow down the natural sowing and spreading of the plant. Plus you’re going to fill this space with all sorts of wonderful leafy things, and the plant in question probably won’t have much of a choice, but to slow its growth once your perennials and self-seeding annuals have made their new home.
So, how do we begin to design and plant our forest guild? I like to begin with the slowest-growing plants. The canopy and subcanopy layers and work out from there, always keeping companion planting in mind.
Canopy layer
The canopy layer are the highest-growing trees. These provide shade, shelter, benefits such as nitrogen-fixing (e.g. kowhai), possibly a food source (walnut) and a place for wildlife. Before planting your tallest trees, pace out how wide they will grow, envisage their height as well and make sure you have enough space for them and they won’t cast too much shade once established. If you have a small space where much sunlight is required, then keep your canopy layer at a minimum (or don’t plant that layer at all). Instead, focus on the subcanopy layer.
Subcanopy layer
The subcanopy is most exciting – this is where you can grow a large amount of produce in a fairly short time frame, say within a couple of years, and it’s where your guild begins to take shape. The design example shown here uses a subcanopy tree as the central piece of my guild.
Apple trees, stone fruits, larger fruit trees kept pruned, or lower-growing natives all fit into this canopy layer. Now isn’t the best time to plant your fruit trees, but it’s a great time to begin working out what will be planted, where, and from where it will be sourced.
I like to begin with a fruit tree. Choose your favourite fruit tree that grows well in your area. Ideally you’ll source a heritage tree, which has a proven record of being disease resistant – we don’t want to introduce any artificial substances into the guild, as that will negatively impact the soil food web (community of organisims living in the soil), so choosing naturally robust trees is a great idea.
Every gardener learns and plans things in different ways. Whether you’re the sort of person who likes designs to be drawn up on paper, marked out in the ground, or just a jumble of ideas in your head, it doesn’t matter. Choose the design method that best suits you. I go outside and take a look around, then place a bamboo cane in the spot I think will work for a tree. Then, I pace out the approximate diameter of the tree and work out where the drip line will most likely be once it has reached a good size. Knowing where the drip line will be helps us to choose positions for the next layer for the guild – berries and shrubs.
Shrub layer
Berries and shrubs often grow well around the drip line of a fruit tree or subcanopy tree. They enjoy being around other plants and jumbled up (rather than planted in straight lines) and often enjoy shade in the summer months. Around the periphery of a fruit tree works fantastically, and often very similar to what they would gravitate towards if growing wild.
Ground covers and root crops or bulbs
This is a great place to begin if you’d like your guild to be relatively weed-free. We want to keep grass and unwanted growth at a minimum so our perennials get a good start in life. A great way to break up new ground and keep weed growth down is to plant potatoes. Spuds can be planted all year round and after harvesting you can then begin to sow other crops or perennials. Another way to nourish the soil is to plant a green manure, such as oats and lupins. Oats help break up heavy soils and lupins fix nitrogen. Root crops, such as carrot, chives, garlic and flowering bulbs, are also fantastic in the forest garden – they all have benefits they bring to your space.
Herbaceous layer
Here you can play around with all sorts of perennials. The mint family work well – including lemon balm – they are easily propagated by splitting up and planting smaller versions of the adult plant (with roots attached). They help keep pests at bay and provide herbs
for the kitchen. Any herb that does well in your climate can be planted here.
Nutrient accumulators
If you have a friend with a comfrey plant, treat it like gold. Comfrey works much the same as dock, by sending a long tap root into the ground they access nutrients many of the other plants cannot reach. Then the nutrients are slowly released back into the top layer of soil as the plant dies back in winter. A small pieces of comfrey root is all you need to get this plant established in that particular place.
Depending on your location and climate, you can get started with planting any of these forest garden layers. Choose plants that do well in your area. Think about the sun, wind, shelter and shade and where your plant might best be located. Take your time – there is much to learn.
