Imagine your garden or community space looking as lovely as a woodland edge. Imagine that on top of looking wonderfully wild, it produces an abundance of nutrient dense food and will ultimately need very little digging, weeding, manual watering or pest control – all in harmony with animals and other beings (eco friendly and vegan). This is ‘an edible forest garden’.

Forest gardening is a way of growing food where nature does most of the work for you. Modelled on natural woodland, crops are grown in different layers from high and medium sized canopy to roots, ground cover and climbers. And its not just food and medicine you will get from the forest garden, there are many more yields.

Through careful planning plants are chosen which have beneficial effects on each other, attract beneficial insects and create a healthy biodiverse rich system that maintains its own fertility. Once established, your main task will be harvesting!

This workshop is in 2 parts, the first part gives you the tools you need to design your own forest garden. In September we have 4 options for this course. There are 3 in person courses in UK, plus an online course.

You must have done part 1 to do part 2

Part 1
Online: 14th, 21st & 28th Sept > NB: In September we have the option to do part 1 in-person in Ampthill, Bedfordshire: 25th & 26th Sept facebook.com/events/570128251012214/

Part 2
Online every Tuesday in October and November facebook.com/events/151962167032258

This second part will give you an opportunity to design your own place with the help of others. You will also learn how to implement your designs.

All sessions will be recorded, so if you miss a day it will be easy to catch up

This section of the course you will learn about the basics of designing a forest garden. You will get to understand
– How to select the right plants for your environment
– Where to place them to ensure they thrive
– How to ensure you have the right nutrients cycling to ensure good crops
– History of forest gardening
– Why make a food forest
– Layout of a forest garden
– Multifunctional pathways
– Creating abundance and resilience
– Low maintenance food growing
– Patterns in nature for forest gardens
– Understanding and maximising edge

The course will be led by Rakesh “Rootsman Rak” – experienced Permaculture designer, teacher and Forest Garden specialist, yoga teacher and homeopath. He has been growing food since he was a child, and has been designing and teaching edible landscaping, permaculture, forest gardening, etc since 2009. Rakesh has designed and implemented forest gardens from small-scale private gardens and schools, to farms, community gardens, communal nature gardens, as well as designing a forest garden on part of a 30-hectare ecovillage in Croatia.

We want this course to be accessible to all and are therefore working in a conscious contribution system, inviting you to pay what you can afford towards meeting the needs of the facilitator(s). We therefore invite those who can pay more to help those who cannot afford as much.

Please contact us if you have any questions about this.

Suggested contributions of between £50 and £200 (ideal contribution £120)

If you cannot afford this then PLEASE get in touch and we will work something out that is mutually beneficial.

To register for this course, please click on the ticket section below and fill in the form (make sure you hit the submit button, after which you will get an email confirmation). If you do not get an email confirmation, have any difficulty filling it in or have any questions please feel free to contact Rakesh

https://forms.gle/e4SPFB1aMiymhjBm6