Forest garden layers for foraging, raspberries, ground elder and moles
Gardening in a natural and forager-like way borrows a lot from the system known as Forest Gardening. In the UK, this was pioneered in the 1980s by Robert Hart, who applied a system of seven layers to his existing orchard in Shropshire. Gaps in a light tree canopy and lower tree layer are colonised by shrubs and herbaceous plants, there’s a ground cover layer of spreading plants and a below-ground rhizosphere of roots and tubers, while climbers thread their way upwards.
By carefully siting fruits, nuts, herbs and shade-tolerant veg, a low-maintenance and sustainable edible garden is created. Small interventions and little soil disturbance should mean working with nature rather than against it. This is a fascinating topic to look into and the book Creating a Forest Garden by Martin Crawford is a good place to start.
In my kitchen garden, I often let plants tell me what they need. Years ago, Dad and I fixed posts, tightened supporting wires and planted a row of raspberries in the time-honoured fashion. Neither of us had gardened in the southwest on clay soil before and after a couple of wet winters, most of the raspberries looked stunted and sickly. Some began to send their suckers uphill in search of better drained soil and I watched and took note. Years later when I bought one pot of summer-fruiting ‘Tulameen’, I knew exactly where to plant it.
One creeping ground cover plant I would not purposefully add to a forest garden is ground elder (Aegopodium podagrica) but you have to admire the tenacity of this troublesome weed, originally introduced by the Romans as a pot herb. We inherited a colony here and despite many attempts, have never succeeded in ridding ourselves of it. Maybe the only course left is to follow the Romans and throw it into a pot!
Another garden conundrum, for which there is no good answer, is how to be rid of moles. We have only found one or two molehills here, probably because they find our clay soil hard-going, but last year one (they are usually territorial) was driving a friend of mine mad. As fast as she added new plants to the garden, it was tunnelling under and digging them up.
Radiant raspberries
The bed I chose for the potted raspberry ‘Tulameen’ was an uphill, sheltered, well-drained and sunny spot close to where the original suckers had been heading and near a colony of strawberries. Well-watered during droughts for the first couple of years, the ex
