Grow an Edible Sanctuary in Your Own Backyard
The pandemic has made many of us rethink our lives and even the way we grow plants – that’s where The Forager’s Garden by Anna Locke is so valuable.
Suitable for the complete novice through to the seasoned traditional gardener, Anna explains permaculture from planning to harvesting. Instead of trawling the countryside looking for plants, you can grow all sorts of forager’s favourites just outside your back door. It’s not a one-size-fits-all book either. A very practical guide, Anna takes you from initial planning to your own edible sanctuary, for year-round food, with minimal effort.
Permaculture is a garden ethos that goes hand-in-hand with nature, creating a thriving ecosystem with healthy soil at its centre. A forager’s garden provides nutrient-dense food throughout every season and requires minimal work to maintain.
The book introduced me to new concepts, such as plant guilds. This involves planting a ‘mini ecosystem’ around a key plant, such as a fruit tree, with others that complement it and discourage pests and weeds.
The Forager’s Garden – plant guilds explained
The six guild roles are:
- Pollinator attracting plants: Brambles, celandine, speedwell.
- Insect repellent plants: Garlic mustard.
- Umbelliferous plants for pollinators: Cow parsley.
- Nitrogen-fixing plant: Clover.
- Dynamic accumulator (deep-rooted plants that can access otherwise out-of-reach nutrients): Nettles, comfrey.
- Ground cover: Creeping buttercup, wood sorrel.
It was also a surprise to me that not everything was edible. You’re creating an ecosystem here, so plants like foxgloves are vital for pollinators but poisonous to us.
If you’re after an instant garden, then permaculture probably isn’t for you. It takes several seasons to develop this functioning ecosystem, but Anna shows how it’s possible to incorporate the methods into an ornamental or traditional veg garden. It moves the emphasis away from a yearly reliance on seed sowing to perennial edibles.
It’s nice to know that I’m halfway there with my experimental front garden. It has blackcurrants and elder underplanted with golden marjoram, bronze fennel and chives!
The Forager’s Garden: Grow an Edible Sanctuary in Your Own Backyard is available now from Permaculture Publications, price £9.95.
Read more horticultural book reviews you might like – The Thoughtful Gardener and Good Soil; Urban Flowers; The Salad Garden; The Jam Maker’s Garden; RHS The Creative Gardener and Charles Dowding’s latest No-Dig volume.
