Review: A Forest Garden Year


Spiny pepper
Spiny Pepper

If you were lucky enough to catch A Farm for the Future then you will have seen a snippet of Martin Crawford in his forest garden at the Agroforestry Research Trust in Devon.

Martin has now brought out his own DVD, called ‘A Forest Garden Year’, which is 49 minutes shot in his forest garden – looking at forest gardening in general together specific techniques that are useful in agroforestry and some of the plants he is growing.

Fifteen years ago, Martin moved from a conventional market garden to a bare field, where he hoped to create a productive forest garden following the work of Robert Hart. A forest garden aims to mimic a natural forest system, but to ‘tweek’ it to make it a productive human environment full of edible and otherwise useful plants. If planned and planted correctly, a forest garden is highly efficient – producing a yield year on year with very few inputs.

That’s the theory, and something you can pick up easily from a book on permaculture or forest gardening, but what Martin’s DVD gives you is a feeling for what it’s like to be in a forest garden. You can see that they’re truly beautiful spaces, and you can hear that they’re teaming with life. The whole film is shot on location in the garden, and I don’t think there’s a minute that goes past without birdsong in the background.

Martin is a knowledgeable and passionate presenter, but I think it’s still fair to say that the plants are the stars of the show. You’ll be introduced to plants you’ve never heard of, and discover new sides to some that are more familiar. Depending on the size of your plot you may not have space for a lime tree (its leaves make a good salad vegetable) or a snowbell (with pea-flavoured fruits), but you could find room for the perennial Turkish rocket and it’s broccoli-like flowers.

And you’ll discover the correct way to harvest bamboo shoots, pollard a tree and graft several varieties of apple onto one rootstock or make a shiitake mushroom log.

If you’re a fan of unusual edibles, permaculture or even just beautiful natural environments then this film is well worth watching. Whatever the weather outside you can escape to a beautiful patch of Devon for a little while, and dream of having your own field to fill with trees.

‘A Forest Garden Year’ is available direct from the Agroforesty Research Trust and costs £14.95.

Posted 22 June 2009, 15:15.   Posted in .

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