As the snow is thawing away, it’s time to get on with it.
I’ve been following the Permaculture maxim of spending a lot of time thinking about it before actually getting on with and have been thinking a lot about the path of the sun, the location of the house and the use of the existing trees that we have on the site. Also I’ve been taking into account the need to have as much edge as possible and the requirement to protect the new plants from deer and rabbits – we’re about 8 miles from Ashdown Forest here and there are unconscionable numbers of deer that have already spent the winter munching off the memsahib’s camelias.
So I’ve decided to go in a snake about 4 -5 meters wide which will start from the fence at the bottom of the lower pool, come up to the Mulberry and sweep round through the plum to go back to the boundary just up from the slope to the exising birch and then go up the boundary and round, inside the fallen willow to the shed. I’ll put a half standard Blenheim Orange tree there so that there will be three large trees in that area with lower bush trees between there and the other birch to allow evening Sun in to reach the house.
Handwritten plan for ta woodland garden
I’ll start by putting 2 damsons, a plum and a quince on M26 root stocks in the new made ground and feed them with some decaying Eucalyptus logs we have on site. I’ll also put a couple of other apples in the new bush area.
Then I’ll have to get a hedge going – I’ll use Gorse (which is a nitrogen fixer) and willow (since we already have some ready for cuttings on site) and lay the fallen Willow at the back.
Finally this year I’m going to sheet mulch the area round the damsons and put them down to potatoes. This will be followed in the Autumn by soft fruit round the future driplines and round those of the existing Mulberry and Plum and some perennial vegetables and mulch plants.
I can’t do these now because we will need to deer proof the garden and this will be a major exercise. However I’ll incorporate the existing blackberries into the line of the hedge at the far boundary and also look to incorporate some hybrid berries into it.
Once we’re underway, the remainder of the snake will be a mixture of trees, bushes and perennials to maximise the productive capability – and minimise the amount of lawn!
I’ll be telling you a bit about what we’ve done soon – we spent last weekend getting on with it so I’ll show you some pictures of what we did.