As the Hope Garden develops, so do the aims and objectives. The overaching aim is a “community space at the heart of a wildlife forest garden“. What this means on the ground so far is three key outcomes:
- An outdoor wildlife classroom for the local school.
- A plant library of edible perennials.
- A blueprint for other community gardens.
I ordered many of the plants back in November 2024 from Martin Crawford at Agroforestry Research Trust, as forest garden plants do tend to sell out quite quickly. Whilst I’m waiting for the landscaping to finish, the plants are currently residing in my back garden (the photo above)!

Martin Crawford’s seminal book Creating a Forest Garden, with plenty propagation tables
There‘s a full list of plants here hopegarden.uk/plants. The key idea idea is that, once the plants are established, people can propagate new plants from the collection of edible perennials at the Hope Garden. Many of the plants are easy to propagate: root cuttings from mint, runners from strawberries, cuttings from currants, bulbils from onions etc. If you‘d like to find out more about propagation, Martin Crawford‘s book Creating a Forest Garden has some very useful propagation tables at the back. And there are plenty of online resources too, the RHS has a whole range of articles.

Clear, large labelling at the beautiful herb garden at National Trust Llanerchaeron
What is really important is clear labelling. The glorious herb garden at Llanerchaeron in Ceredigion is a case in point, with tidy raised beds, accessible gravel paths and large, clear plant labels.
There will be raised beds in the Hope Garden (you can see them pale blue rectangles by the main entrance, plus heptagonal beds for the mints), as much because the soil is wet, heavy clay and raised beds will provide a free draining soil, but it will also make it easier to label the plants.

Raised beds provide free draining soil and help organise unruly plants!
One of the issues with designing a garden is that you don‘t know how many plants you‘ll need until you‘ve nailed the hard landscaping. Seasoned professionals can do this without looking at the site but I much prefer a hands-on approach, designing with bamboo and cotton string, then taking it back to the CAD drawing board. Here you can see the plants in the CAD drawing waiting to be put into place!

CAD plants waiting to be deployed
A very exciting development is that the Hope Garden and Ysgol Cilgerran are taking part in the Mint Mint Challenge, and we have purchased over 24 different cultivars. This is a project run by Dr Simon Poole, who has a national mint collection. The students are allocated a mint cultivar, and then have to look after it, propagate it and share it with other schools. There are badges to be won!

3 specially designed heptagonal raised beds, with dividers to separate mints
Propagation
Cuttings
These can either softwood (taken early in the growing season) or hardwood. I’ve found currants (Blackcurrant, Redcurrant, Jostaberry) and aronias very easy to propagate from cuttings, elaeagnus less so. Willow and dogwoods are even easier, as they adore damp conditions.
Division
Dividing a plant, normally in the dormant season, works well for species like hosta and rhubarbs. Mint
Tip-layering
Blackberry are infamously good at propagating by tip-layering. We have 3 cultivars in the Hope Garden, all of them thornless, all easy to propagate by pegging the tips into a pot of compost.
Runners
Strawberry species send out runners, long strands with rooting nodules on them. Again, easy to peg out into pots of compost.
Bulbs & bulbils
Many alliums (eg Elephant Garlic, Welsh Onion) create bulbs that can be replanted, and some like Elephant Garlic also produce bulbils.