Forest Garden Wales

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Forest Garden Livestream

Wednesday 30th September, 10am BST

Building Dead Hedges

This week, I’m heading outside again for the livestream and this time I’ll be building dead hedges in real time 😲. Dead hedges are fantastic, particularly if you live on a windy hillside in West Wales. Mine are quite brutalist affairs, 4 fence posts with brash (smallish branches) stacked between them. There are more artful ways to create them, which is what I will be attempting in my ham-fisted way on Wednesday 30th September.

That’s the way to do it. Artful dead hedges by garden designer John Little

Livestream

• Date: Wednesday 30th September

• Time: 10—10.30am

• Livestream: twitch.tv/forestgardenwales

Zoom Q&A

• Zoom link

• Time: 10.30—11:00am

• Zoom password: fedge

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Positive Action

Black, Asian and minority ethnic groups are massively under-represented in UK horticulture. To redress the balance, every month I offer 10 free places to BAME people, students and the unwaged on my online course.

If anyone else is interested in similar positive action, I have written up my notes about the Equality Act 2010 and statistics for the UK horticulture industry.

Windbreak species spreadsheet

For anyone creating a forest garden, Plants For A Future is an invaluable online database of useful plants. They have lots of additional information, including a full list of species that can be used as windbreaks.

The downside is that the list isn't sortable, so it’s not easy to find, say, evergreen species under 2 metres.

Until now. I’ve created an online Google Docs spreadsheet of the PFAF information that you can sort 😎.

Select all the columns, go to the Data menu, then Sort range. Be sure to check Data has header row. Bingo 🎉.

Tapestry Lawn species spreadsheet

A Tapestry Lawn is a non-grass lawn, which requires less mowing and has more diversity. A perfect fit with a forest garden. Lionel Smith has written a lovely book about them.

Being an advocate of using native plants where possible, I have created a list of UK native plants that can be used in a Tapestry Lawn. And again, I have created a sortable online Google Docs spreadsheet for your delectation. Use the instructions above to sort the species.

Early Bird pricing ends 30th September

The Early Bird pricing of £39.99 for my online forest garden course The Backyard Forest  is coming to an end on Wednesday 30th September!

It will be going up to £99.99, with significant discounts periodically available. I need to spend a fair bit of time recording and editing a large list of practical walkthrough videos to add to the course, which will also be made available on my YouTube Channel. 

Support the livestream

Thanks to the support of some lovely people, I now have a functioning Patreon page. If you like my Wednesday forest garden livestreams or my YouTube Channel, then you can support me directly 🙂. I have also “soft launched” the idea of weekly Zoom forest garden coaching for only £30 a month, price includes The Backyard Forest.

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