Garden Wild Edible Classes

Inspired by the native plant gardener Benjamin Vogt, I am working on a series of online gardening classes centred around wildlife and food forest gardens. The overarching theme is resilience in the face of the climate and nature emergency, with a focus on wildlife habitat, UK native plants and design.There’s an outline of these proposed classes here: natureworks.org.uk/classes 

This is all very much a work in progress! I will be releasing classes on a rolling basis, using Gumroad as my platform.

During lockdown, I did create a full 3½ hour online forest garden course called ‘Backyard Forest’. But I think it’s a bit too chunky, and people would be better served with an à la carte menu of classes. Also, Udemy take up to 63% of the takings (as they market the course), whereas Gumroad take 10%+fees.

I also made a free ‘Plan a Backyard Forest’ mini-course as well, which is a bit wooden (my first ever!) but still has some useful info on setting up a plan.

My first course is going to be 🥁…

CAD for Gardeners

This is an introductory course on how to use CAD for garden design, and specifically wildlife and food forest garden design. I use the amazing QCAD software, it is cross-plaform and there is a free version which is absolutely sufficient for garden CAD.

It’s important to plan, whether on paper or CAD, primarily to play with different positions for plants and features, and get the spacing between trees right (to allow enough light through for the understorey crops).

It’s also good to communicate ideas and document which plants are where. I wrote a thread CAD for gardeners on Mastodon. If you’re interested, the slideshow for the CAD course will always be online here: natureworks.org.uk/class/cad-intro

My garden design

I earn my living mostly from my garden design practise. I have noticed a significant drop in enquiries since 23rd September 2022. I’m not sure why that date sticks in my mind…

If you do need a wildlife and food forest garden designed, please have a peruse of my portfolio! I’m really keen on the overlap between wildlife, edible and ornamental gardens, creating wildlife habitat and working with native plants and wild flowers natureworks.org.uk/portfolio

Climate activism

As well as being a garden designer, I am also a climate activist, because this world needs more climate activists. You don’t have to glue yourself to roads, there are a whole range of other actions you can take. As part of West Wales Climate Coalition, I have helped organise a meeting with leaders of Ceredigion Council. This was a bit daunting but they were very welcoming and open. We’re helping with a climate curriculum for schools, advising on a Climate & Nature Emergency section for their website, and sharing knowledge about a climate citizens assembly.

I also believe creating a wildlife forest garden is also climate activism, and I want to extend that into towns with Wildlife Allotments.

Quick Links

• Tending the Wild is a fascinating ethnobotanical account of the indigenous people of California. The author introduced me to the terms ethnobiology and economic botany, and she is speaking at a joint conference next year!

• Earthworms on the decline, a study by the British Trust for Ornithology.

• This time of year, it’s worth considering how industrially produced Christmas trees are grown.

• This industrial agro-capitalism is the force behind so many greenhouse emissions and habitat loss, indeed, “capitalism is the cause of the Yellowhammer’s decline”

• “Small spaces can make a big difference to wildlife”, so get creating wildlife habitat and planting a diversity of native plants and wild flowers in your forest garden! Every bit makes a difference.