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An overview of the project:
Helen Kington, Project Manager at Transition Town Wellington says:
"Thanks to Blue diamond for their grant for our new area of Forest Garden at Fox’s Field.
We started with some essential tools such as forks, trowels, secateurs and gloves, and lots of bulbs which we plated in autumn. A forest garden is a layered planting scheme where each one of the plants has a purpose, either as some kind of yield for us humans, or to supply nutrients to other plants.
The beautiful spring flowering bulbs provide some welcome early nectar for our pollinators as well as cut flowers reducing how much we will import from Holland, reducing our carbon footprint.
Then in winter we planted some soft fruit; these shrubs form one of the layers of a forest garden, sitting between the fruit trees and making the most of the sunlight. We also planted asparagus crowns and rhubarb, the most famous types of perennial vegetable, and part of the herbaceous layer which will die back every winter.
Two more great additions in the early spring were the benches. Nothing is much more important in a community garden than somewhere for visitors to sit! The bigger bench sits with a fantastic view of Fox’s Factory. The smaller bench has a view of the new area and a flowerbed in front with lots of flowers including Geums and lupins. Lupins are just one of the nitrogen fixing plants that we added in spring, as well as the broom, indigo (also used for dying material) and Elaeagnus. The latter is one of our favourite forest garden plants because it not only fixes nitrogen to help other plants grow but gives us edible berries to make jams out of and can provide a windbreak. So, if you need a hedge or windbreak in your garden but worry about it negatively affecting other plants, then this is a great species to choose because it will actually benefit the rest of your garden. We were really pleased to find it at Blackdown Garden Centre.
We added lots of herbs for our forest garden: sage, thyme, rosemary forming part of the shrub layer and planted between the trees, with mint, garlic chives, pulmonaria, wild garlic, oregano and golden marjoram forming groundcover under the trees. Under the trees it’s important to be able to access the fruit in autumn, so these can either be cut back or cope with a little foot traffic during harvest time. In a damper spot near the rhubarb, we added Hostas.
In early summer we added the last instalment of plants as some perennial cut flowers including coreopsis and dahlias which can also be used to dye material and received perhaps the most important tool in our dry summer - a hose! Thankfully the council filled up our water butt with water so we could keep the plants alive. The plants haven’t grown as much as we would have liked in their first summer, but the framework is there, and with the rain we’re now having in September they are now starting to put on fresh growth.
Thanks so much to Blue Diamond and the help we received from Richard and Ryan in our community gardening sessions! It’s really nice to highlight how many garden plants can be used in a forest garden."