My Secret Garden

After attempting to grow vegetables in my backyard, which receives less than 4 hours of sun per day, I shifted those efforts to the front, where the sun shines up to 8 hours per day.  I can grow things there, but not as well as those that come from my plot in our community's garden area.  Now, I am going back the other direction.  Rather than concede my remaining undeveloped 0.6 acres to the forest, I'm beginning to turn it into a forest garden.  Ironically, this entails removing a good number of trees for reasons just mentioned.
The thing is, a forest garden is not the type of forest that we find most places.  It is a place where selected plants are allowed to successively develop together, as in a new forest, but does not result in an overstory that shuts out the shrubbery from the sun.  My first tree removal authorization comes with the stipulation that I plant a new tree for every 5 that I cut down.  In my area, that is probably a good ratio to build a forest garden by.  The trees I cut down will either end up as biochar or as hosts to some of my gourmet mushrooms.
My forest garden will be a secret garden since my undeveloped land is mainly in a ravine not visible from the road.  Plants growing on slopes tend to be smaller than those on level ground, so I may be able to get away with planting a larger range of plants, while keeping their sizes down to garden scale.
Since forest gardens are an attempt to restore our surroundings to something approaching the Garden of Eden, I thought I would start with one of the trees reputed to having been there - the fig (contrary to what you may have been led to assume about Eve eating a forbidden apple).  Along with that, we picked up a gooseberry bush from Edible Landscaping on our last swing through Virginia.  They are positioned well to be the premier supplier of forest garden plants in our area as this idea catches on.

Local Radicals

The transformation that forest gardening will make to our lives, if the Forested vision comes true, is radical.  Radical means "related to, or proceeding from, a root."  In that sense, any change that stems from a "grassroots movement" is, by definition, radical.  There are a number of these upstarts in my local area which I will be posting about in the future.  The most relevant to the matter at hand is one I will be assisting this coming weekend - Chesapeake's Bounty.

I had long taken this farmstand to be not much more than a mini-farm with a good location.  Later I learned that they bring in wholesome food from all over the local area.  They also give classes on topics that match my interests, e.g. mushroom cultivation, and other permaculture subjects.  More recently, I discovered that they are planning on planting food forests across much of their 40 acres.

This is just the beginning, but it is mind-boggling to imagine being able to wander through acre after acre of planted perennial patches ranging from ground-level shrubs to canopy trees, each serving some beneficial function.  Twenty-four acres of food forest is probably a record, and might be a spark to emulation, both locally and throughout the eastern states.

A Vision for the Eastern U.S.

At the Mother Earth News Fair we recently attended in Seven Springs, PA, we were privileged to listen to Lincoln Smith of Forested, LLC give some practical advice about food forest gardening. Forested runs a training center in Bowie, MD where they seek to enact their vision, which reads,

Our 50 year vision is for forest garden ecosystems to sustainably supply
a large portion of all the things people use in the eastern United States.

Considering that the portion of forest garden products in what most people here currently use is approximately 0, Forested's ambition is on a scale as that of Amazon.com.  Smith speaks with certainty about the need for forest gardening to replace the mono-culturated crops that presently supply most of our food, fiber, and a little fuel.  Edible Forest Gardens - Volume One: Vision & Theory by Dave Jacke elaborates greatly on Forested's vision, and may, indeed, be the source of it.

Let me quote excerpts of the scenario that Jacke lays out to give you an idea of what life may look like in the Forested future:

• Fruits and nuts swell on trees everywhere
• ...foods grow along your path - you even know all their names and how to use them
• Flowers bloom all over the place
• Some of these forest gardens approach farm scale as they grow 
• Cottage industries ... have sprung up
• fishing got better
• Previously isolated forest fragments linked to each other
• Our human habitation started looking, feeling, and acting more like a natural ecosystem
• Agriculture as we knew it was transformed
• we felt healthier, more alive, more connected... than we had for generations

The week after the Fair, I had a conversation with the new director of the American Chestnut Land Trust (topic of my previous post) in which he asked me if I had any involvement with agroforestry (synonymous with Forest Gardening).  The fact that he has an interest in this concept is crucial to the chances of ACLT achieving their vision for Calvert County, since forest gardening is going to redefine life all around us if Forested's vision comes true.

A Vision for Calvert County, MD

The grass can often seem greener in other pastures, but I found a kindred spirit in the American Chestnut Land Trust (ACLT) here in my county, so I may need not search far to find my chosen community. Below is an excerpt from their strategic plan.  How would you like to have this be your county?

Our goal is for Calvert County to be a national model for environmental stewardship balanced with a healthy economy. We hope that in 2018 our landscape will be characterized by forests, fields and farms and well-planned and diverse communities, surrounded by a healthy river and bay. Additionally, we envision a future where citizens are educated and active stewards of the land and their daily living is enhanced by the abundance of natural areas.

The ACLT is a grassroots organization started back in the last century with pushback against developers potentially destroying the natural beauty of this part of the western shore of the Chesapeake.  It now manages over 4,000 acres of semi-wilderness in the central part of our peninsular county.

A recent project of the ACLT is the Double Oak Farm which is now run by volunteers, especially local Master Gardeners like myself.  I'm going to give my fifth public demonstration of biochar-making there on October 18th as part of the Calvert County Farm Festival.  This ought to have many more onlookers than any of my prior demos.  It would be nice to get others interested in making biochar, but I've become reconciled to being the only local char maker for the time-being.  At least it will be another opportunity to make biochar familiar to prospective users.