Tom La Dell reviews Creating a Forest Garden by Martin Crawford, which is based upon the author’s many years of experience in this way of cultivating fruit. We are accustomed to fruit trees, shrubs and plants grown in straight rows or maybe trained on walls, but in the forest garden these conventions are overthrown and instead planting follows that of a natural woodland.

A forest garden is a mixture of trees, shrubs and plants carefully sited and grown together in optimum conditions and to maximise positive interactions. The aim is to create a young, natural woodland where every layer is producing fruit or other useful products. The trees are the first component because they cast shade and affect the growing conditions of the shrubs and plants around them. A rather open canopy of trees is ideal so that some light demanding shrubs and plants can be grown, with shade tolerant ones near the trees.

The book is arranged with 100 pages of text and illustrations on how the usual factors of climate, soils and nutrients have to be understood before trying to design and create a forest garden. This is the key to a successful relationship between the plants themselves and their environment. Instead of focusing on the needs of a single species, which is then refined to be the requirements of a single cultivar of that species, you build a complex system of requirements where the plants create the environment for each other over time. It is more like applying the knowledge and understanding of an experienced gardener compared to someone who only grows bedding plants.

The range of fruit and vegetable plants in the book is extraordinary. They are divided into sections of trees, shrubs, herbaceous perennials, annuals and climbers. Each has a list of plants followed by a section on how to design with that layer.

Trees are divided into Common fruiting trees, Less-common fruiting trees, Trees for nuts and seeds, Trees with edible leaves (limes anybody?), Trees for herbs and spices, Trees with other edible parts, Firewood from coppice, Medicinal trees and Nitrogen fixing trees. Each species has a part to play in providing useful products from the garden. Besides apples, pears, plums and cherries, persimmons are now possible and several species of Eleagnus provide good fruits. Our native and related sea buckthorn is now available as a number of cultivars selected for their fruit and so is elder. Selections of chestnut are also tried for fruit in our climate. The design section following the tree list gives the basic information so that a forest garden can be properly planned, designing for the site and the chosen fruits, vegetables and useful plants.

With shrubs we come into more familiar territory but where jostaberry (a favourite topic on Fruit Forum for three years) has its place with saskatoon (Amelanchier alnifolia), chokeberries (Aronia species) and fuchsias. I can vouch for the Chilean guava (Ugni molinae) being a delicious tasting berry. The native saltbush (Atriplex halimus) has edible leaves and bamboos are grown for their edible shoots. The design section shows how to place them in relation to the trees.

Herbaceous perennials and low, woody ground covers are grouped together and include Rubus species and strawberries. If you have ground elder already, eat it! 'It tastes better than it smells' makes me hesitant. You can refer to the table of 'Forest garden salads' for more ideas. Who would have thought that Solomon's seal (Polygonatum hybridum) and the related false spikenard (Smilacina racemosa) have edible young shoots? Or that giant butterbur (Petasites japonicum) has edible leaf stalks like celery.

These are followed by annuals, biennials and climbers, including woody species. Here the hardier species of kiwis are included, such as Actinidia arguta and A. kolomikta. Amongst all these fruits, vegetables and useful plants there is no nutritional information which would have been interesting and this is not really covered in the book at all. The last sections are on design elements such as clearings and paths and how they contribute to the productive ecosystem. Key chapters on harvesting, preserving, maintenance and propagation round off the book. This is a handsome publication with sturdy covers but it is more than a reference book. It challenges our preconceptions about growing food plants and there will be many lessons for sustainable cultivation and food production for the future.

Tom La Dell

Creating a Forest Garden: Working with Nature to Grow Edible Crops by Martin Crawford; published by Green Books, 2010. £30.00