Intersectional forest gardening

Welcome back to the new look Nature Works newsletter. I have moved from MailChimp to Substack, as it’s a nicer interface and I plan on writing more often and regularly.

Like many people in the UK, I have recently had to concentrate more on paid work to cover the bills. In my case, this means garden design work, which has meant expanding away from “pure” forest gardening into more ornamental and wildlife gardening.

So the focus of the newsletter from now on will be intersectional gardening

This means there will be more flowers.

But I shall also continue to celebrate the beauty of edible crops.

There will also be more design, landscaping and ornamental garden elements that I feel fit in with the sustainability ethos of forest gardening.

Finally, there might also be a little bit of socio-economic analysis (mild rants?) on account of the fact that we’re in an Ecological and Climate Emergency.

And each newsletter, I will have a Quick Links section, which gives quick, er, links to all the items of interest that I’ve recently found. These mostly come from the Telegram Forest Garden group that I host (thank you to all the like-minded souls 👋).

Quick links

• Robin Harford’s Eat Weeds plant of the week is Sowthistle

• Ecological Gardens with Sid Hill, Sarah Wilson’s Roots and All podcast. I agree with pretty much everything that Sid says apart from the bit about native plants.

• How to grow a community orchard, article on The Guardian

• The Plant Lover’s Backyard Forest Garden, new book by Pippa Chapman (I haven’t read it yet but I want to!)

• Wales lost rainforests map, article on Nation.Cymru

• The Power of Reseeding Native Annuals, excellent Growing Greener podcast interview with Alicia Houk