Backyard Forest

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Forest Garden Livestream

Wednesday 12th May, 10am BST

Garden Design Secrets

Next Wednesday, I am revealing my forest garden design secrets. This world needs more forest garden designers, so I am showing you how I get started with a forest garden design.

I previewed the tools that I used last week, including Simplenote, Cloudinary QCAD. This week, I'll take a look at organising files, publishing notes, using Google Sheets for a plant list, grabbing a satellite photo, setting up a CAD file, using the Forest Garden Spreadsheet, copying Forest Garden CAD pre-made symbols and basic CAD techniques.

That is all quite tech and full-on geek but if you want to be a forest garden designer, this is a good place to start 🤓

There will be an informal Zoom chat after the livestream at 10.30am, all welcome.

Forest garden CAD plan for a relatively small back garden

Livestream

Zoom Q&A

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Last week’s livestream: School Forest Garden

Native ground cover plants

I am setting up a UK native wild flower project called Garden Wild, that promotes the use of wild flowers in all aspects of UK horticulture (see the Garden Wild Spreadsheet for an ever-expanding list of plants).

In forest gardening, I always advise to grow native plants where possible. This is because they have co-evolved with native wildlife.  

In an exciting spin-off project, I am exploring the use of UK natives for ground cover. This includes Dwarf Comfrey (Symphytum tuberosum), Field Forget-me-not (Myosotis arvensis), Creeping Buttercup (!) (Ranunculus repens) and many others. Some species, like Forget-me-not and Foxglove, can be used as a temporary ground cover whilst more permanent species get established. Here’s an incomplete and growing list.

Support the forest garden livestream!

If you would like to support the forest garden livestream on a regular basis, I have a Patreon page patreon.com/backyardforest. For a one-off donation, I have a GoFundMe page gofundme.com/forest-garden-livestream

There’s absolutely no obligation to donate, this just helps me pay the bills (and for new equipment when my laptop finally dies!). The livestream will always be free, as will the recordings on my YouTube channel. No pasarán ✊🏾.

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