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Introducing the Hope Garden

Community space at the heart
of a wildlife forest garden 💚

Jake Rayson smiling

by Jake Rayson

hopegarden.uk/slides/intro

Funded by Local Places for Nature, delivered by National Lottery Heritage Fund with Welsh Government
Press P to see notes and credits
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Agenda

💡 1. Ideas
🌳 2. Forest garden
☕ Tea break
🐛 3. Wildlife garden
👫 4. Community Assembly
🥪 Free lunch

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Screenshot of Hope Garden workshops on Eventbrite

class: center

1. Ideas

Drone photo of field

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View of field with white pegs from gate, with dramatic skies

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Google Map of Cilgerran village with key parts highlighted in red and green

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Joining up the dots

Why are we here?

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Life

Big fat juicy Elephant-hawk Moth caterpillar

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Nature & Climate Emergency

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Forest fire with flames in the sky and the trees all burning

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Photo by Cameron Strandberg on Wikimedia

Introducing the Hope Garden

Sketch of Hope Garden

  1. Community Assembly
  2. Wildlife garden
  3. Forest garden
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Pobl, tir a natur

Estonian wood meadow in the sunshine

  • People, land and nature
  • Humans doing good
  • Tending the Wild by Kat Anderson
  • Tir by Carwyn Graves
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“Neither in any other community of
  Western Europe, nor anywhere in the
  tropics, does the number of vascular
  plant species within a few square meters
  reach the numbers counted on the
  Estonian wooded meadows.”

When culture supports biodiversity:
The case of the wooded meadow
Kull, Kukk & Lotman 2003

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The top five wooded meadows according to their local (1m²) vascular plant species richness, on the basis of our existing data, are Laelatu (76) and Vahenurme (74) in the western part of mainland, Tagamõisa (67) and Küdema (65) in Saaremaa, and Tärkma (61) in Hiiumaa.

Ideas — Forest garden — Wildlife garden — Community Assembly

Culture shift

You Do Not Like Them. So You Say.
Try Them! Try Them! and You May.
Try Them and You May, I Say.

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Multi-threaded garden

Children in a field looking for bugs

  • Food: resilient crops
  • Gardens: resilient ecosystems
  • Community: resilient networks
  • Policy: decouple food from profit
  • Education
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Aims

Sketch covered area

  • A blueprint
  • Best practise model
  • Perennial veg collection
  • Workshop space
  • Outdoor classroom
  • Garden for future generations
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Features

Sketch of Hope Garden

  • Covered meeting space
  • Benches
  • Water fountain
  • Bird bath
  • Gabion habitat
  • Raised beds
  • Herb garden
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Direct community action
grassroots garden

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2. Forest garden

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Definition

Edible ecosystem

Bumblebee on pinkish flower of sedum (Hylotelephium spectabile)

“Growing edible crops
  in a wildlife garden”

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Screengrab of forest garden video

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Characteristics

Illustration of climax vegetations & position of forest garden by wild wood

  1. Sustainable
  2. Productive
  3. Wildlife friendly
  4. Layers
  5. Perennial
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  • Illustration of forest garden in “climax vegetation”
  • The further right you go, the more energy, less diversity, more fragility
  • Illustration from Martin Crawford’s Creating a Forest Garden

Characteristics

Comfrey leaves chopped around base of fruit tree

  1. Sustainable 👈
  2. Productive
  3. Wildlife friendly
  4. Layers
  5. Perennial
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  • Mineral accumulators & nitrogen fixers
  • Wildlife predators for pests
  • Permanent “living mulch” ground cover
  • Trees, perennials & soil biota sequester carbon.
  • Biodiversity encouraged
  • Native plants where possible
  • Low maintenance!

Characteristics

Red round strawberry-like fruit on Cornus kousa tree

  1. Sustainable
  2. Productive 👈
  3. Wildlife friendly
  4. Layers
  5. Perennial
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  • Fruit, nuts, leaves, shoots, roots…
  • Herbs, wood, canes, dyes etc
  • Multi-layered, using all available space efficiently

Characteristics

Hoverfly on inflorescence of open pink flowers

  1. Sustainable
  2. Productive
  3. Wildlife friendly 👈
  4. Layers
  5. Perennial
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  • Native plants, as co-evolved
  • Wildlife features
  • Create ecosystem, create pest control & nutrients

Characteristics

Lots of trees and shrubs

  1. Sustainable
  2. Productive
  3. Wildlife friendly
  4. Layers 👈
  5. Perennial
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Forest garden layers

  1. Canopy
  2. Small trees
  3. Shrubs
  4. Herbaceous perennials
  5. Ground cover
  6. Climbers
  7. Rhizosphere
  • Layers are really efficient, in a lazy way!
  • My logo is 3 basic layers: canopy, shrubs, herbaceous perennials

Characteristics

Silvery grey pointy leaves of Cardoon

  1. Sustainable
  2. Productive
  3. Wildlife friendly
  4. Layers
  5. Perennial 👈
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Perennial, mostly, plus easy annuals 🙂

  • Lower maintenance
  • Less soil disturbance
  • More efficient
  • More nutritious

Some annuals, veg like courgettes & squash, and some that self-seed, eg Marigold and Nasturtium

Guidelines

Windbreak of small yellow plants

  1. Windbreak 👈
  2. Tree spacing
  3. Ground cover
  4. Nutrients
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Also protect some young plants from direct sun.

Guidelines

Plan of tree diameters

  1. Windbreak
  2. Tree spacing 👈
  3. Ground cover
  4. Nutrients
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  • Forest garden emulates woodland edge
  • Need to make sure enough light gets to understorey
  • Plant for final size!
  • Check PFAF & RHS for sizes
  • More work to move than to plan!
  • For cultivated fruit trees, choose right rootstock
  • Formula: ¼ to ½ average canopy diameters

Illustration based on Martin Crawford’s Creating a Forest Garden

Guidelines

Ground covered by green plant with blue flowers

  1. Windbreak
  2. Tree spacing
  3. Ground cover 👈
  4. Nutrients
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  • Always keep the ground covered
  • Annuals, use a mulch. Forest garden, use ground cover plants
  • When establishing, use bark or wood chip, plus temporary ground cover
  • Wood chip mulch does not rob nitrogen (PDF)!
  • I prefer bark but wood chip more available
  • Best temporary ground cover in West Wales, White Mustard—buy bulk

Guidelines

Dangly purple flowers of comfrey, daft white dog in background

  1. Windbreak
  2. Tree spacing
  3. Ground cover
  4. Nutrients 👈
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  • Calculate nutrient budget, Creating a Forest Garden Ch.6
  • Have soil test for nutrients & pH, local farmers co-op
  • Make sure to have enough “system plants” providing nutrients
  • NPK — Nitrogen, Phosphorous, Potassium
  • Nitrogen: alder, pea family, Sea Buckthorn, Autumn Olive
  • Potassium: comfrey
  • Phosphorous: not really provided by plants
  • 'Bocking 14', sterile, bred for nutrients
  • Dwarf Comfrey, good thick ground cover

Principles

Quince on a tree, young forest garden beyond

  1. Work with nature
  2. Vegan, organic, natural
  3. Native plants where possible
  4. People at heart 💚
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Principles

Creating a Forest Garden book on desk

  1. Work with nature 👈
  2. Vegan, organic, natural
  3. Native plants where possible
  4. People at heart 💚
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  • “Working with nature to grow edible crops” is subtitle of Martin Crawford’s seminal book Creating a Forest Garden
  • Create balanced ecosystem for weed control, pest control & nutrients
  • No dig
  • Sustainable

Principles

Recycled hoggin path in a garden

  1. Work with nature
  2. Vegan, organic, natural 👈
  3. Native plants where possible
  4. People at heart 💚
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  • Vegan - because why kill animals and terrible impact of industrial farming
  • Organic, no artifical pesticides or herbicides
  • Natural - sustainable local materials, not new concrete, no plastic, no oil. Or at very least recycled.

Principles

Tapestry of native wild flowers in a field

  1. Work with nature
  2. Vegan, organic, natural
  3. Native plants where possible 👈
  4. People at heart 💚
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  • Use in bulk eg windbreaks & ground cover
  • Native plants co-evolved with wildlife
  • Food source for invertebrates
  • Support food web
  • “If something is not eating your plants, then your garden is not part of the ecosystem”

Principles

People planting trees on a mound in a field

  1. Work with nature
  2. Vegan, organic, natural
  3. Native plants where possible
  4. People at heart 💚 👈
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  • People tend the land
  • Rekindle relationship with the world
  • Management, management, management
  • Who will look after the garden?
  • Always budget for it in a project
  • Grow gardeners as well as gardens
  • Tending the Wild by Kat Anderson - Native American knowledge and the Management of California's Natural Resources

3. Wildlife garden

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Key elements

  1. Design for ecosystems
  2. Create habitat
  3. Native plants
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Design for ecosystems

Screenshot of species distribution map around Cilgerran

  • Survey your ecology
  • Research the area
  • What is rare/protected?
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Who’s eating what?

Big fat juicy Elephant-hawk Moth caterpillar

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Grow for inverterbrates

Insects on yellow Fennel flowers

  • Native plants co-evolved with invertebrates
  • Invertebrates foundation of food web
  • Think nectar, pollen & primary food plant
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Create habitat

Dead hedge by John Little

  • Water
  • Dead hedge
  • Hedges
  • Tri-cut grass
  • Crevices
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Ponds

Pond early morning

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Crevices

Gabions by fence

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Native plants

Hand-made garden sign saying “If something is not eating your plants, then your garden is not part of the ecosystem”

  • Natural pest control & fertility
  • Native plants co-evolved with invertebrates
  • Invertebrates foundation of food web
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Japanese Maple vs Hawthorn

Acer in the autumn on left, Hawthorn in blossom on the right

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Japanese Maple

Screenshot of DBIF website, listing 1 interaction for Acer japonicum

Total interactions = 1

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Hawthorn

Screenshot of DBIF website, listing 1 interaction for Crataegus monogyna

Total interactions = 197

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Where native plants?

Flowering shrub next to river

Biomass bulk in forest garden

  • Windbreaks 👈
  • Ground cover
  • System plants
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  • Guelder Rose (Viburnum opulus)

Where native plants?

Bed of low growing ground cover with blue flowers

Biomass bulk in forest garden

  • Windbreaks
  • Ground cover 👈
  • System plants
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Ground Ivy (Glechoma hederacea)

Where native plants?

Orange berries on silver leaved shrub

Biomass bulk in forest garden

  • Windbreaks
  • Ground cover
  • System plants 👈
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Sea Buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides)

Revel in the vernacular

Sundew sticky plant in bog

  • Work with nature
  • Where are you?
  • Conditions?
  • What grows?
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Use local materials

  • Photo is Round-leaved Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia)

All plants are useful

Close-up of spiky edged nettle leaves

  • Most UK natives on PFAF
  • Edible, herbal, weaving, building, nutrients etc
  • Wildlife food & habitat
  • Make new friends
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Butterfly

  • Nettle (Urtica dioica), photo by Maksym Kozlenko on Wikimedia Commons
  • Edible leaves, medicinal, barrier plant, fibre, leaf protein, food source for Map butterfly (Araschnia levana)
  • Photo by Jörg Hempel on Wikimedia Commons

Cultivars

Red currants on the bush

  • Cultivars better cropping
  • Nativar is native cultivar
  • Cultivar generally inferior
  • Neighbouring near-natives
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Native plants where possible!

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4. Community Assembly

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Hall room full of people engaging in a comunity assembly

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Democractic deficit?

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Key features

  • Non-hierarchical
  • Structured
  • Decision making process
  • “Wisdom of the crowd”
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Three pillars

  1. Radical inclusivity
  2. Active listening
  3. Trust the process
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The End of the Beginning

Sketch of Hope Garden

hello@hopegarden.uk

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Introducing the Hope Garden

Community space at the heart
of a wildlife forest garden 💚

Jake Rayson smiling

by Jake Rayson

hopegarden.uk/slides/intro

Funded by Local Places for Nature, delivered by National Lottery Heritage Fund with Welsh Government
Press P to see notes and credits
2 / 61
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