A Quick Start Guide to Your Food Forest Design.

Designing a food forest can be a very personal journey.

If it's your first time then you might be feeling daunted. There's a huge amount of information that you can take in online and in books, and good permaculture practice will suggest a patient, observational year to get to know your site before committing to the design.

This newsletter isn't here to replace or contradict any of those resources and I very much encourage you to take all opportunities to learn. But I'd also consider hands on learning with nature to be just as important as the reading. Get going with this as soon as you can!

My quick get started suggestion is to identify two areas on your site as soon as possible:

• Area 1: Your initial growing zone. This can be as small or large as you like and it will be a place that you feel confident that you'd always like to see plants growing. If your food forest is being developed in a small garden then often this will be along a fence line or existing flower bed rather than the middle of the lawn. If you have existing trees then you might like to consider those as a starting point instead.
• Area 2: Your initial wild spot. Again, size doesn't matter here it's just about choosing somewhere where you are happy to leave nature to it for a bit. In a small garden you might want to keep this in a discrete spot with the compost bin. If your space is really large then why not make life easy and hand over the majority of the site to this to begin with!

You can't make mistakes.

If you feel really unsure about where to place things until your design ideas have more fully developed then just keep away from the more permanent of planting such as trees. But you can still enjoy the process of learning and establishing plants for now. Most things can be moved later.

I like to think of that Area 1 growing zone as the nursery of the site. Introduce and familiarise yourself with a large variety of plants here. Those that you learn to love (or that really love your site) you can allow to reseed and divide for growing in larger volumes as your design develops.

Deciding What to Grow

I'm going to repeat myself here. You can't make mistakes.

There is no right or wrong decision when selecting plants for your food forest. Some plants will succeed better than others and on that point I would suggest that your choices become based on risk; if you're considering buying something that is so costly you might cry if it withers away then hold back and do more research. If you're getting cuttings or seeds for free then give them a go and see what happens.

Native or none native?

It's your food forest so make your own judgement, but my very quick tip is to establish with plenty of natives at the offset. Introduce a small number of none natives if desired, or start experimenting with them later on. The line is very blurred either way.

As I touched on in the previous newsletter the success of the food forest lies in developing a functioning ecosystem. There's so many complex relationships going on in there that you're best to bring together plants that have some history with one another so they can just get on with things for you.

The first seasons of your food forest are about attracting the many layers of life as quickly as you can. The pollinators and soil life and pest management team etc. Each of those roles will most readily be filled when you introduce a diverse range of native plants.

Let The Harvests Guide Your Design!

At our Food Forest Group call earlier this week I posed some questions about how our desired harvests can be a way of stimulating thinking for the design of our spaces.

Letting the outcome guide us is a sound design process and of course if we want to grow food then it only makes sense to be growing foods that we know we'll love!

The following points are intended to encourage you to keep asking the right questions as you move forward with your design:

• How often do you want to harvest? For me the food forest becomes an experience more like foraging than harvesting. Fresh pickings everyday as I explore through the space with less of a need to gather or process crops in bulk. What experience would work well for you?
• Are you looking to harvest food crops alone or other things too? I love the range of learning that comes from discovering plants that can be used for dyes, fibres, fragrance and simply for beautiful cut flowers alongside all of the fresh foods. This diversity is also beneficial for the resilience of everything else.
• Are you eager to grow your favourite foods or happy with the easiest? Compromise isn't always needed but it's worth considering how much time you have to put in to your food forest when you contemplate your crops. If you're looking to grow something slightly exotic or prone to disease then this will need extra thought within your design.
• How soon would you like to harvest? Most food forests will be filled with perennial food crops including the obvious fruit trees and bushes through to more unusual vegetables that you can't buy in the shops. These plants can need a long time to establish before you get to put anything on your plate, and although the patience is more than worth it you might want to introduce some of your favourite annuals alongside. These will play a key factor in the design as they may require more careful positioning.

Join us for our Group Call!

Every month we get together, chat, share ideas and ask questions around our food forest journeys.

Thank you to everyone who joined us earlier this week, it was wonderful to see faces both new and familiar!

Our calls take place on the 1st Tuesday every month, 4pm (UK time)

It's free and easy to sign up using this link on Eventbrite.

If you have questions or struggle for any reason with the sign up then feel free to DM me Helen Fisher Hope to see you there!

About This Newsletter

Twice a month I produce a new episode of this newsletter to explore how we can learn from nature, work with nature, support nature and connect with nature all while we create and manage food forests!

Some episodes will also bring practical steps and insights from a range of projects.

If you have a project that you'd like to share about then DM me Helen Fisher!

Catch up on the previous episode of this newsletter HERE.

About the Author: Helen Fisher started a food forest at her 1 acre site in Lincolnshire in early 2020. She is the creator and host of the We Are Carbon podcast which explores regenerative solutions from across the globe & considers how society could thrive if we first allow nature to thrive alongside us.