Hope Garden

Announcing a wildlife forest garden with a Community Assembly at its heart 💚

Jake Rayson
July 20, 2023

Firstly, a warm welcome to my new subscribers, mostly from my Forest Garden Primer, a 20 minute class which I’ve managed to publish for free. Please do spread the forest garden word by sharing the class.

Hope Garden

Together with a very talented team, we are creating an RHS show garden for the Nature and Climate Emergency. At its heart lies a Community Assembly, in the midst of a wildlife forest garden 💚

A Community Assembly is an inclusive, structured space for reflective discussion and learning, where ideas are generated, decisions are made and action is taken. It is a form of direct democracy.

It is a facilitated, non-hierarchial space where everybody’s views are heard and valued. We want to use this space in the garden to bootstrap the practise of Community Assemblies, and to discuss the Emergency in a horticultural context, with a range of topics and input from experts.

The wildlife forest garden showcases the low carbon practises required to increase wildlife and native plant diversity, whilst simultaneously growing edible crops.

An organisation called Trust The People is running a free 8 week course on Community Assemblies in September, and I’ll keep posting updates about the garden here 😊

Online workshops

I gave an online workshop for the Birmingham & Black Country Wildlife Trust last night. They have an amazing 2 acre EcoPark site right in the city, and part of that is a 20m x 11m forest garden.

The workshop was great, focussing on public level access to forest gardening via the route of foraging.

If you’re interested in the content, the slides and notes are here natureworks.org.uk/talks/forage and I posted a trial run video on Youtube.

If you’re interested in hiring me to run a workshop, drop me an email [email protected]

Forge garden design project

Birdseye view of the new project

I’m very lucky to have a new garden design project, codenamed Forge. It’s in the middle of Ceredigion, and the client is looking for advice on low-maintenance ornamental planting for a holiday let, a vegetable growing area & polytunnel, and lots of lots grass in a field. There will be trees.

I’m making a site visit next week for a survey and to write up suggestions. Before starting, there are a few suggestions that are useful for many people:

Mow a perimeter path around large grass areas, which stops bramble from creeping in.
Divide the garden into different areas for different functions using paths.
Break the job down into manageable chunks. Once you have your infrastructure in place (structures, canopy layer, windbreaks), concentrate on one area at a time.

I will be looking at existing plants, possiblities for wildlife habitat, sizes for trees and opportunities for glorious swatches of colourful native wild flowers.

If you would like your garden designed, I have details about my design process on my website and feel free to email me [email protected]