← Flora & Field Stewardship

Preparing the Ground.

Every forest garden begins the same way - with a patch of rough grass and a decision about how to turn it into living soil. Here is how we go about it: by hand, and in no great hurry.

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Watch first

Begin by looking

Before a single plant goes in, spend a season watching. Where does the sun fall, and where does the frost sit late into the morning? Which corner holds water through the winter, and which bakes dry by June? Dig one hole and read the soil - its colour, its smell, how far down the worms go.

The land will tell you what it wants to grow, if you give it the chance. Nothing here needs rushing. A forest garden is planted for decades, so a few months of watching is time very well spent.

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Clearing

Clearing the ground

A lawn or a meadow will not simply give way to a planting bed - the turf has to be cleared, or persuaded to let go of the ground. There are three honest ways to do it.

Skim the top few inches of grass and root off with a sharp spade, and stack the sods upside-down in a heap. Left a year, they rot down into a crumbly, fibrous loam - some of the finest potting soil you will ever make. It is real work, but it is immediate, and it leaves clean ground to plant into at once.
Lay thick cardboard or several sheets of newspaper straight over the grass, overlapping every edge, and cover it with four to six inches of compost, well-rotted manure or leaf mould. Starved of light, the grass dies back; the worms pull the decaying blanket down and do the digging for you. By the next season you plant straight through it - far less labour, and much kinder to the life in the soil.
Where the ground is already bare, water it and wait. Let the first flush of weed seeds germinate, then hoe them off shallowly before they can set seed. Repeat once or twice and you draw down the weed ‘bank’ held in the top inch of soil, so your own plants get a clear, uncrowded start.
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Dig, or don’t

To dig, or not

For generations the advice was to dig deep and turn the soil over every year. We have learned better. Beneath the surface lies a whole living fabric - fungal threads, worm burrows, the fine architecture that moves water and carries food to roots - and every turn of the spade tears it apart. Wherever we can, we leave the soil undisturbed and feed it from the top, the way a wood feeds itself with falling leaves.

We do borrow one thing from the old way: its spirit. The wartime call to dig for victory turned lawns and parks over to food, and reminded a whole country that anyone with a patch of ground can grow something worth having. We keep that resolve - and leave the rotavator in the shed.

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Feed the soil

Feed the soil, not the plant

A forest garden asks for very little once it is going, but at the start it pays to build fertility and open structure. Everything here goes on top, for the worms to take down.

  • Garden compost - the simplest and the best. Return everything the garden gives you, and it returns it again.
  • Leaf mould - a year or two of fallen leaves rotted quietly in a bin or bag. Unbeatable for lightening heavy, sticky ground.
  • Well-rotted manure - from a trusted, chemical-free source, stacked until it is dark and sweet-smelling.
  • Green manures - clover, field beans or phacelia sown over bare ground to hold the soil, feed the bees, and fix nitrogen before you cut them down and let them rot in place.

Spread it, and be patient. In a few seasons a tired field becomes dark, open, living earth.

Feed the soil, and it feeds everything else.

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Timing

The season for the work

Autumn and early winter are the time for all of this. Clear and mulch as the season closes, then let the frost, the rain and the worms do the rest through the cold months. By spring the ground is ready - and so are you.

A meadow is made over years, not weekends, and so is the soil beneath a forest garden. The patience you spend now is repaid every season that follows.

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