Product Description

A bestseller! The definitive forest garden book and one of the best examples of applied permaculture ever published. This guide contains everything you need to know to create a maximum output for minimum labour design. A forest garden 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. Highly recommended. 10 colour and 35 b&w photos, 65 drawings.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12141 in Books
• Published on: 1996-01-01
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 184 pages

Clean Slate, No21, 1996
With Patrick's enthusiasm for the subject and beautiful photographs....the book is an inspiration, as well as a practical guide.

Allotment and Leisure Gardener, No3, 1996
This highly inspirational book gives everything you need to know in order to create a beautiful and productive forest garden.

Benign Design, No8, 1996
....order this book NOW if you want to create a productive mini-forest in some available corner of your garden.

Customer Reviews

a readable guide to gardening with food-producing plants
This book is inspirational and practical. It shows how to create an ecosystem of food-producing plants, whether you have a large garden or a few yards of spare ground. The plants are arranged to replicate a woodland or forest environment, with the emphasis on low-maintainance and production of food (fruit, nuts, vegetables) throughout the year. The first chapter considers the environmental philosophy of this type of gardening. Subsequent chapters cover the plant types suitable for the UK, divided into categories of trees, shrubs and ground-layer plants. Each plant type is described in a very readable manner, with details such as basic growing requirements (soil, light, water), eventual size and yield. Although familiar plants such as rhubarb, raspberries, apples, plums are described, less common but equally viable varieties such as medlar and quince, even kiwis, are treated in equal detail.
Most of the emphasis is on the smaller trees which grow to about 3-4 m height. Larger trees such as chequer and walnut are described only briefly. The chapter on vegetables deals with perennial and self-seeding varieties, rather than the annuals of a typical vegetable plot. Particularly useful is a chart showing at what time of year each type of fruit can be harvested. More sketchy is how long it takes from planting the trees to when they start bearing fruit, however, for most varieties this would seem to be about 5 years. The last chapter deals with planning and gives an example of how a medium-sized garden could be adapted for this type of food production. The last few pages give details of nurseries that can supply the plants, so if you want a change from the shiny citrus fruits at the local supermarket, a garden of mulberry and medlar is only a phone call away.

Medium Term Self Sufficiency Beckons . . .
For those with any amount of land who want it to be productive and efficient, here is a book that:

1. Addresses low energy living holistically (from houses to heating to food production)
2. Recommends approaches to growing food all year without overuse of machinery
3. Chooses crops and approaches that fit with human-powered activity
4. Sets you on the right path on nearly any issue of sustainable living

Excellent reading for those who wish to prepare for the day when the world will not be so comfortable.

The most inspiring gardening book I have read in a long time
and an excellent source of information, even if you are not particularly interested in planting a full scale forest garden. The sections on trees, bushes and perennial vegetables in particular in a mine of practical advice on how to grow these, and would be of interetest to anyone comtemplating growing anything from rohan or whitebeam to Good king henry, through a variety of fruit bushes.
Buy it for your nearest and dearest gardener at the first occasion :)