Dear friends, I just came upon this uplifting video about Mark Walsh and the work he and his team are currently doing in Poland and Ukraine in response to the invasion. This is the text from the youtube video: If you’d like to support the Sane Ukraine Project, please click here: www.saneukraine.org In this video, Alex Howard talks to Mark Walsh who recently launched the Sane Ukraine Project. The fundraising project will support Mark and his team to deliver trauma and resilience training to twenty local psychologists and coaches, which will in turn allow them to administer trauma emergency aid ..read more

“Where once there was a global, strong, resilient, functionally interconnected nest of ecosystems, today in so many places life is clinging on and hanging together by a thread. In many places those fine threads have already broken and much life has been lost. Because ecosystems are (at least potentially) everywhere, a forest garden opens up the possibility to connect with life, and to enhance, sustain and protect it as a whole even beyond the garden boundary, with small local ecosystems effectively nested within larger and yet larger ones, such that all life is connected and interdependent. Th ..read more

After deciding on the main plants that you simply must have in the forest garden it can then be a struggle to decide which of the other possible plants to prioritise and to include and which to exclude (at least for the moment).  Here are my thoughts on a few of these possibilities: aronia (chokeberry) Aronia berries and related products are currently in the news as having amazing antioxidant and immune supporting functions and are appearing on the shelves of health food shops. I have had an aronia bush for many years, first grown in a pot and then transplanted to the current forest garde ..read more

Whether it is flowers, foliage, fruit or seeds – every part of every plant’s life is precious with a unique place in the never ending cycle of life. As forest gardeners we are here to watch as this marvel unfolds, giving every plant the opportunity to live out its own life and to feed the lives of other beings. The calendula has been flowering for months and is not finished yet. It will no doubt re-seed itself in situ and I have also collected some ripe seed and scattered it around the garden to multiply its loveliness! calendula This fuschia lives in a shady part of the garden and is late to ..read more

Four years ago next month my partner and I were fortunate enough to be able to buy a small (3 acre) woodland in Shropshire.  It is a beautiful mixed wood which at that time comprised mainly mature oak and birch, with one or two willow.  Beneath this canopy layer there was alder, holly, hazel, rowan, hawthorn and blackthorn.  Herbaceous plants included honeysuckle, bramble, bracken, ferns, wild raspberry and foxglove, and there was a groundcover of mixed grasses, mosses, bugle, tormentil, primrose and bluebells. The woodland is designated as a semi natural ancient woodland, and i ..read more

All life is connected and therefore utterly interdependent; and everything we do (or do not do) has an impact on the wider world. “A less wild world is a less stable world.” David Attenborough speaking on BBC TV Earthshot programme no. 1 “My take on forest gardening has always been on the wilder side. This has been deliberate because I wanted to push that particular boundary and find out what would happen, and clearly none of our growing landscapes would work without the wild elements both within and without their ecosystems. My small forest garden on a Welsh hillside fits into the larger ecol ..read more

For years the trees, shrubs and other plants in my forest garden have been incredibly healthy with no sign of disease on them. However this year pear rust (gymnosporangium sabinae) arrived and I only really became aware of it as a problem today when I noticed ugly galls protruding from the lower surfaces of certain leaves. These leaves have had bright orange spots for several weeks and had I been aware of the disease this would have been a warning sign. Pear rust is unusual in that it needs both pear trees and juniper bushes to complete its life cycle. This article has more details. Before loo ..read more

Beautiful, tiny and shiny, both sweet and sharp at the same time, and borne in hundreds on mature bushes, these wonderful wineberries are one of my absolute favourites. There are more than I can pick and we can eat, and even in previous years when there were less I always left some for the birds and other animals. Forest gardening principle: whether in abundance or not, harvest only enough ..read more

I will certainly never be running a marathon (or any other race for that matter), but over recent weeks I have been on my own jam making marathon – my ‘jamathon’. The redcurrants, whitecurrants, gooseberries, blackcurrants and jostaberries have all been dripping off the bushes, pouring themselves to the ground on such heavy laden branches.  In response I have been making more jams and jellies than I ever attempted before, but still leaving plenty for the birds to eat. So far I have used about 8 kg of fruit to make jams or jellies and have frozen a similar amount for another time ..read more

Here’s something for your book wish list all you forest gardeners and aspiring forest gardeners – Alan Carter, who has been blogging for years about his forest garden in Aberdeen (Scotland) has written a book which is due for release later this year. His recent blog post gives more details here ..read more