How to Make a Forest Garden

by Patrick Whitefield

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.

Genres: Gardening, Nonfiction, Nature, Agriculture, Environment, Plants, Food

184 pages, Paperback

First published June 22, 2002

Reviews

[Guy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somewhat lost its interest for me early on when Whitefield admitted that he'd never actually made a full-scale forest garden himself. As one might suspect, therefore, his descriptions and advice are fairly generic. There are some useful pieces of information, but more often than not only what you'd expect to find in a standard organic gardening book rather than specific to forest gardens. He doesn't give any "communities" either, although since these would tend to be relevant only to the UK, I guess it wouldn't have helped me much even if had done so.

[Liz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I finally recently read this book after it had been recommended by several other people and then had been sitting on my shelf for several months waiting for me to have the time. Perhaps it is because it was so talked up by others, but I found it to be somewhat of a letdown from what I was expecting. Part of it is that a lot of the general growing information contained within it will already be things that people involved in organic growing, permaculture, and/or biodynamic growing are likely to already be doing - quite possibly by simply intuiting the idea on their own without even having it suggested by anyone else, as many of the things just plain make sense to anyone with any knowledge at all of any of these growing techniques - and part of it is that, being targeted towards Britain, so much of the information contained within it just doesn't apply to growing conditions of most gardens here in the US.

Additionally, Whitefield's professed hatred of blueberries - saying that they are one of the blandest fruits he's ever tasted, and has difficulty imagining why anyone would want to grow them - meant that I felt that I couldn't trust his opinions of any of the unusual crops that I've never grown before, and his only citing British-relevant information on whether things are, for example, native or invsaive, meant that I'd have to do a lot of my own legwork before even contemplating growing anything I wasn't already familiar with, just to make sure that it wasn't invsaive here, was hardy here, etc. etc. I don't really see very much point in reading gardening books that give me much more homework to do instead of helping me figure things out. I can only recommend this book to those that are truly new to the world of organics/permaculture/biodynamics, and even then, I'd hesitate to recommend it to anyone that doesn't live in Britain.

[Gill · Rating 4 out of 5]

More informative than 'Permaculture in a nutshell', but again we find we have been doing a great number of the suggested things already. I find it slightly lacking in solid factual content, as if one is expected to go on a course to find out more about the practical applications. Probably a necessary evil as it is trying to be all things to all people: those with a town garden or a large farm.

[Jimmy J. Crantz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though the book feels a bit old and lacking in terms of colourful pictures, it is really great in terms of information. Even though I live in Sweden I learned so much from this book; about garden microclimate, about soil, how to think when choosing plants, how to utilize space and an example of how to plan a garden.

[Wouter Bos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good manual for starting a forest garden. Do mark important texts, though, since the markup does not provide some basic scanning to see which plant can for example be planted in the shade or is a perannual.

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't find this too useful/relevant to me as a beginning/intermediate gardener

[Bettie]

to look into...

[Karla · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review is based on partial reading of the book. I didn't read it cover to cover yet, as some of the details I want to dig in to when I'm ready to implement it. It's a good basis for those new to gardening for food, like me, especially with perennial plants. Downside of the book is that it is written for the British isles, so all information about plants is only valid there... More work is required to find out whether plants can adapt to other climates or whether they're invasive in other areas.