New plants for the forest garden

Thanks to Sura Detox, Paul Barney at Edulis Nursery and a local customer of Paul's, Doug Smith, we have over 20 new plant species in our forest garden. As they grow they will add much needed variety and interest to the beds at the entrance to our site.

The Agroforestry Research Trust describes a forest garden like so:

"A forest garden is a designed system based on trees, shrubs and perennial plants. These are mixed in such a way as to mimic the structure of a natural forest - the most stable and sustainable type of ecosystem in this climate. The primary aims for the system are:

• [for it" > to be biologically sustainable, able to cope with disturbances such as climate change

• [that" > it should be productive, yielding a number (often large) of different products

• [that" > it should require low maintenance."

The new plants were selected to suit the conditions on our site and will increase the productivity and the diversity of our forest garden. The majority of the new plants are ground cover species, as this is layer we most needed to improve although we have planted some shrubs, a tree and some climbers as well. The plants from Edulis Nursery are of interesting and unusual species such as Blue Sausage Fruit, Jostaberry and American Peanut and now we have them in the ground we are waiting eagerly for them to grow and fill the forest garden.

When they grow the plants should not require much work but at the moment in this dry summer they need occasional watering, mulching and weeding around to get them established. We hope to do as much of this as possible with school groups, course participants and volunteers. We also want to develop some interpretation to go with the garden. If you are interested in getting involved please phone 01730 823166 and ask for Raina or Penny or email courses@sustainability-centre.org or penny@sustainability-centre.org