The Home-Scale Forest Garden: How to Plan, Plant, and Tend a Resilient Edible

Learn how to create an edible forest garden - perfect for gardeners and growers at any scale!

Includes over 100 cold-hardy berry bushes, fruit and nut trees, perennial vegetables, herbs, edible flowers, mushrooms and more.

In The Home-Scale Forest Garden, Dani Baker shares what she learned as she became a forest gardener, providing a practical, in-depth guide to creating a beautiful, bountiful, edible landscape at any scale - from a small garden to an allotment to a larger plot of land.

When market gardener Dani Baker attended a permaculture workshop, she was inspired by its message of working with nature to create a thriving edible garden ecosystem. She decided to launch a new experiment she dubbed the 'Enchanted Edible Forest' on her farm in upstate New York. Baker candidly shares both her mistakes and her successes to help readers better understand the dynamics of a forest garden as it grows and changes over time. From her Swale Folly and Tamarack Travesty to her discoveries of unique ways to rescue and transplant tree seedlings, readers will appreciate the practical advice as she recounts lessons learned from her grand edible gardening experiment.

The Home-Scale Forest Garden is complete with descriptions of over 100 food-bearing and multifunctional plants for every layer of a forest garden: overstory and understory trees, shrubs, herbaceous plants, groundcovers, vines and mushrooms, too. The book also provides information on planning, planting and maintaining a resilient forest garden ecosystem, including:

Using permaculture principlesObserving and mapping your spaceBuilding planting beds, including hugelkultur moundsCoping with saturated soilMatching perennial edible plants to the right growing conditionsGrouping plants in diverse layers that attract and shelter beneficial insects and birdsCreating microclimates to increase the range of plants you can growPruning, propagating, managing pests and moreExpending less energy for greater reward

Dani Baker includes over 200 photographs taken over 10 years of forest development, along with illustrations of a garden layout and special plant groupings for a range of conditions, including hot, dry sites and shady, moist sites.

This is the perfect guide for growers of all levels who want to work with nature's model and expand the range of food crops they grow as they embark on their own forest garden adventure.