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Posts from Forest Garden Wales Blog for 03/06/2019
By [email protected] (Jake Rayson) on Mar 05, 2019 08:00 pm
The majority of Forest Garden Wales workshops & tours are on Airbnb, with monthly discount slots on Facebook/Eventbrite.
I’ve organised the forest garden tours and workshops for 2019. I decided to market them as Airbnb holiday Experiences because it is a vast amount of work to manage an online shop, calendar and publicity.
Sure, Airbnb take 20% of the ticket price (£27 for the tour, £75 for the workshop) but I also wanted to be flexible and spread available slots from April to September, rather than just have monthly, fixed events. I might well end up with a couple of guests for an all day workshop, which is fine because at the end of the season I’ll have a clear idea which days and months are the most popular.
To help spread the word, and also to dip my toe into the world of Facebook events, I’m also running fixed, monthly discounted tours and workshops via Eventbrite and Facebook. The ticket prices are £22 (£5 less) for the tour and £65 (£10 less) for the workshop.
Sat 20 Apr
Sat 18 May
Sat 22 Jun
Sat 20 Jul
Sat 24 Aug
Sat 21 Sep
Sat 27 Apr
Sat 25 May
Sat 29 Jun
Sun 28 Jul
Sat 31 Aug
Sat 28 Sep
It got a bit messy with Facebook, as you can only repeat an event for up to 3 months!
Over the next month, I’ll posting more workshop material and virtual tour videos. Please help spread the #ForestGarden workshop word!
By [email protected] (Jake Rayson) on Mar 04, 2019 08:09 pm
The first stage of the Ornamental Forest Garden is complete and there are large gaps about the place. This is fine, for now.
We’ve planted the canopy layer in the Ornamental Forest Garden, a new, greenfield, 1 acre site. Up to a couple of weeks ago, I was measuring and planning, using a tape measure, CAD software, bits of bamboo and lots of string.
Then, the digger arrived, to dig the wildlife pond and level an area for the forest garden workshop tent. It was a lot of work, 3 days digging, and great to see the hard landscaping shape the garden. But it did mean I had to finally plant the canopy layer trees.
I had ordered quite a few trees and shrubs from Agroforestry Research Trust and they’d been heeled-in to a raised bed for a couple of months. The warm weather in February made me nervous, leaving it any longer would increase the likelihood of needing to keep the trees well watered throughout the summer. The full list of trees is here:
Cornelian Cherry (Cornus mas) Gourmet
Haw Crataegus arnoldiana
Bladdernut (Staphylea pinnata)
Chestnut (Castanea) Marigoule seedling
Hazelnut (Corylus avellana) Corabel, Webbs prize Cob
Elaeagnus umbellata Big Red
Highbush Cranberry (Viburnum trilobum) Phillips, Wentworth
Plus I moved the Mulberry and Cornus kousa ‘Chinensis’ from the other forest garden, to a more sheltered position. Together with a couple of plum Excalibur and apples grafted (Ashmead’s Kernel and Poppit Bubblegum) by own fair hand, that’s enough canopy layer to be getting on with.
In terms of ornamentality, the Cornelian Cherry currently has beautiful witchhazel-like yellow blossom, the Hawthorn will have a glorious spring display and the Highbush Cranberry have beautiful open flowers in spring and glorious autumn red berries.
What I did notice was quite a lot of space. There’s only a couple of shrubs in the list, the smallest probably being the Highbush Cranberry. That’s fine, these things will grow, and with the windbreaks pretty much planted for this year, my work is for the most part done.
When the tent gets put up and we start to use the space for tours and workshops, then we’ll get a better idea of how to design the other areas. From the big things (tent, pond, trees) down to the detail, in easy stages. There will be a wildflower section, perennial vegetables near the tent, probably more windbreaks and nurse trees. But all in good time. Leave some space now for things to grow.
