Welcome to this bonus newsletter! I made a CAD for Gardeners online class and thought they’d sell like the proverbial digital hot cakes. Truth is, they haven’t.

The class is actually pretty good — it goes through the basics of setting up the free and amazing QCAD software, then the real basics of creating shapes, entities and how to modify things, with a couple of examples at the end. Honestly, if you’re learning CAD for garden design, this is probably 80% of what you need to know. “Circles for trees” and “Tree spacing ¼-½ avg canopy dia” are the mantras you need to know.

So, I arranged a CAD for Gardeners giveaway of 5 copies to rustle up at least some reviews. And I managed it, hooray! 🥳

To celebrate, I am giving away five more copies for everyone who gets this newsletter but who missed out on the socials. Even if you have no intention of learning CAD, do pass it on to someone who might benefit. Use this link:

store.natureworks.org.uk/l/cad/GrabCADCopy

Forest garden photos

Rose 'Generous Gardener' on a David Hunter rose arch at Rhug gardens. The garden is really starting to take shape now, it has been a couple of years in the making.

I love the smell of the Curry Plant (Helichrysum italicum) on a hot autumn afternoon.

Another Drone Fly (Eristalis tenax) on the Daffodil Garlic, again! I really didn’t realise what ornamental plants they are, absolutely thriving in a rich soil in full sun. And edible.

Spotted this Goji Berry in flower on a walk by the coast. I think they really appreciate some shelter and warmth, rather than being forced out on an exposed hillside!

Gorgeous Garden Orb Spider (Araneus diadematus) on the polytunnel.

Tree Mallow (Lavatera maritima) out on the same coastal walk.

Inspirational quote

YouTube latest

Update on the Primary school project

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Quick links

• Cornish seed-scattering event marks fightback against habitat loss

• How Buildings Learn by Stewart Brand - this book changed my design life. Buildings change. Gardens change. Everything grows. And here is the TV series.

• The Real World of Technology by Ursula Franklin - this book also changed my design life. And here is the audio lecture series.

You may notice that these two books don’t even mention gardens. But I think there are so many lessons in these books that will benefit your garden.

Hire me

The Undergrove garden

If you’re thinking of creating your own wildlife forest garden, do get in touch, even a free half hour consultation can save you lots of time in the long run natureworks.org.uk/portfolio

We’re moving house in the next few weeks, which is up there with the biggest individual life changes. So this newsletter might not be delivered as efficiently and regularly as you have become accustomed to. (Who am I kidding?)

In other news, 2023 has seen ocean temperatures rising quite literally off the charts. And the wildfires in Canada have affected an area of 15.2m hectares versus the last 10 year average of 1.4m hectares. This is an area just under the size of Norway in flames. Meanwhile, global government subsisides for fossil fuels in 2022 were a record $7 trillion. If you were wondering when’s the right time to take climate action, it’s kind of now.

Talking about Gardening in a Crisis to a rapt audience

My small contribution to this gargantuan defining issue of humanity, which is fiendishly-complex-yet-simple (stop burning fossil fuels) is designing wildlife forest gardens, creating spaces to grow resilient crops for humans whilst providing diverse habitat for wildlife. I gave a talk as part of the Climate Matters event organised by Aberteifi/Cardigan Extinction Rebellion. The hopeful message was, humans can be a force for good. If you’re interested, the slides are available online natureworks.org.uk/talks/crisis

Forest garden photos

Hornet Mimic Hover Fly (I think) on Hemp Agrimony (Eupatorium cannabinum). Amazing wild flower.

Hoverflies on Daffodil Garlic (Allium neapolitanum)

Hoverfly on sedum

Recent photo of my Clifftop garden, fences by David Hunter of The Coppice Plot

More Hemp Agrimony, Swee Woodruff, Silverweed, rose 'Harlow Carr, Winter Honeysuckle, Sweet Peas and more!

My favourite nursery Celtic Wildflowers, just outside Swansea on the M4. Well worth a visit.

Comma butterfly (Polygonia c-album)

Inspirational quote

Quick links

• Oak breeding for food - Brilliant PDF document by Eric Toensmeier, a forest garden legend

• Dotori-muk - Korean acorn jelly made from the starch

• Nut cracker plans - PDF plans to build your own nut cracker and nut sorter by Martin Crawford

• Foraging, Sustainability & Culinary Exploration - Eatweeds podcast with Matthew Pennington

• Essential Guide to Apricots - excellent guide by the Polyculture Project

Hire me

Wildlife and food forest garden designer natureworks.org.uk/design

Greetings and welcome. I’m having a bit of a summer break to recharge my batteries, so no more newsletters until early September.

I am giving a talk called Gardening in a Crisis for my local Extinction Rebellion group, as part of a Climate Matters/Her Yr Hinsawdd day at the Small World Theatre in Cardigan/Aberteifi on Saturday 9th September. There are some great talks, about climate justice, the river Teifi estuary in a time of climate change, and climate science and activism, plus a whole load of activities including block-printing and e-bike display.

You can see my name from here

For full details, have a look at the website xraberteifi.uk

Hope Garden

In other news, work progresses slowly with the Hope Garden. This is a show garden for the climate emergency, a wildlife forest garden with a Community Assembly at its heart 💚🌳🤲. We’re aiming to get into an RHS show in 2025. For more information about Community Assemblies, see this PDF here by Trust The People.

Once we’ve moved house, we’ll be applying for funding. I have set up a Ko-fi funding page! This is where I’ll be posting updates, at least until I have the website up and running, so do follow me there.

In my downtime, I’ve been playing with a prototype 10 metre by 15 metre space. I’ve used bamboo & string to create the assembly area, about 6m diameter, and it shows the 3 sections for the seating plus 1 section for the facilitator and note taker. I’ve used upturned supermarket crates in lieu of benches.

Crates for benches!

The final size will be more like 8 metres diameter, catering for about 25-30 people. The assembly area will be covered. I was thinking about a tipi, or a yurt. But I saw a simple canvas roof by our friends at BlueGreenCymru, and it works really well (and cheaply!) This is my comedy sketch:

Forest garden photos

I love this accidental colour combination of Ragwort, Hogweed and Highbush Cranberry

A huge range of wasps in the forest garden, this is in the Ichneumon family apparently!

And this is the cutest black and yellow fellow, on the polytunnel timber

Autumn Olives ripening

My trustworthy Felco secatuers that I am grudgingly coming to admire

Inspirational quote

YouTube latest

Subscribe to my YouTube channel bit.ly/subscribe-natureworksgarden

Quick links

• In search of lost fruit - Where did that forgotten fruit go?

• Fruitful Landscape - Michael Judd talks forest gardens with the brilliant Margaret Roach

• Martin Crawford's symposium 2023 - Masses of free videos on range of forest garden topics (including me!)

• There aren’t enough trees in the world to offset society’s carbon emissions – and there never will be

• How Indigenous people shaped Australia’s curious geography of plants

Hire me

Wildlife and food forest garden designer natureworks.org.uk/design

One of the accounts I follow on Mastodon is Radical Anthropology. I find anthropology fascinating, as it’s looking at what actually happened rather than a glib assertion (eg patriarchy isn’t universal). David Graeber’s book Debt: The First 5,000 Years is my first anthropological venture.

This interest really has come about from reading Antonia Malchik’s brilliant newsletter On The Commons. Gardens are peculiarly human constructs, they are literally set into the landscape, yet the rise of individual property rights alongside an economic system predicated on corporate capitalism means the very foundations of our modern, individualistic, parcelled plots are shaped by the history of ownership over the past 400 years.

I coined the phrase Radical Horticulture in response to moving house, and the realisation that a private garden only lasts as long as the present private owners. Far better for community wildlife forest gardens, whose survival doesn’t rely upon one individual. However, it can be very difficult setting up a community garden (I’ve been trying to create wildlife allotments in my local town for a year now), it feels like against the grain of private ownership.

Also, when I’ve talked about growing native plants, creating wildlife habitat and establishing ecosytems because a) it’s good for wildlife and b) it increases crop yields, I have been getting a fair bit of pushback. This was an email I received from a subscriber to my local allotment newsletter:

Really, I didn’t think it was that radical! Wildlife gardening isn’t an either/or, it’s all of the above.

Forest garden photos

Horse Mint (Mentha longifolia) in flower in the rain

Field Scabious (Knautia arvensis) in flower in client’s garden

Unidentified Sedum (Hylotelephium hylotelephium?) coming up for blooming time. Gloriusly green, will be pink

The Undergrove garden starting to grow and come together

Inspirational quote

YouTube latest

I am back to livestreaming! Well, when I’m sat at my desk. It’s mostly me, noodling in CAD, writing lists of plants or researching planting schemes. I try to livestream 2-3 times per week, subscribe to be notified when I’m live.

Subscribe to my YouTube channel grwd.cc/subscribe-natureworksgarden

Quick links

• 2nd International #ForestGarden#FoodForest Symposium - Martin Crawford has very kindly made all these presentations and discussions freely available on his website. There is a shed load of material here, have a good rootle through.

• How to water your garden in a drought - by Rebecca McMackin. It’s been raining in West Wales for the past 6 weeks, but there was no rain for the previous 7, so good to learn this stuff before you need it.

• Keep the Kew Herbarium at Kew - I’m not one for sharing petitions very often but this is important, there are plans to break apart Kew Gardens.

• On Rabbits And Salad Bars in Suburbia - Benjamin Vogt hits all the right notes again “Do you have rabbit damage in your garden? Ready for a radical thought? It's not damage. It's nature.”

Hire me!

Wildlife and food forest garden designer, remote design a speciality natureworks.org.uk/design

It’s okay, I’m not planning to leave this earthly realm just yet. We are actually downsizing, from 8 acres to 400m², moving house to a nearby village. 8 acres is just too much for a garden-designing climate activist parent. But I will miss the trees, we have planted about 3 acres of forest garden and coppice. We have our first walnuts in the very year that we’re moving home, which is bittersweet.

I’ve been thinking about the term “sustainability”. It doesn’t just apply to sustainable gardening practices but also to your very human life. A forest garden needs to be humanly sustainable. You need to have the economic capital behind you to sustain its upkeep, as well as the time, energy and desire. This is why it’s so important to consider the human aspect when designing a garden. How much money, time, energy and experience does the client have to maintain the garden? There are no gardens without people.

In this respect, I think forest gardening with an emphasis on trees is a bit misleading. You can have a small forest garden. My clients at the Undergrove project have a 140m² rear garden and there are so many wonderful native and edible plants crammed in there, with espaliers along the fence, roses and honeysuckle growing up into the Oaks.

I had a conversation with a friend about legacy, and how it was good that the new owners of our house will have trees for successive generations. Then I found out that they had sheep, and I had visions of there being no trees at all! In this respect, a forest garden held in common is far more likely to survive than one in private, individual hands.

Illustration for a substantial yet cost-effective tree guard

Luckily, the new owners actually love the planting and want to use tree guards to protect them from the sheep, so the trees will be safe for now. But I really do feel it’s important to set up community forest gardens across the land for a truly long-term sustainable legacy.

Forest garden photos

The Aronia berries are ripening. They’ll be ready when they’re black.

Stunning Chicory flower

Hemp Agrimony, with a beautifully delicate scent

Elephant Hawkmoth caterpillar

Inspirational quote

YouTube lat

Using cleft Sweet Chestnut stakes and old fence palings for dead hedges!

Subscribe to my YouTube channel grwd.cc/subscribe-natureworksgarden

Quick links

• Plants for Bugs - Do insects prefer native plants? A study into the garden plant origin preferences of invertebrates. From way back in 2015 but still useful. I stand by statement though, “native plants where possible” (and yes, possible is doing a lot of heavy lifting).

• Is Comfrey Safe to Eat? - Post by Monica Wilde. TL;DR Not The Russian One!

• Plants, Wildlife and Polycultures for Forest Gardens - Paul Alfrey from The Polyculture Project has embraced the newsletter and writing some really wide ranging and interesting stuff.

• Gulf Stream could collapse as early as 2025 - even more reason to grow resilient perennial crops. The UK could end up with a climate like Calgary

  

Would you like a wildlife forest garden?

I am taking on new commissions, from surveys to full garden landscaping. My portoflio is online here natureworks.org.uk/portfolio

Firstly, a warm welcome to my new subscribers, mostly from my Forest Garden Primer, a 20 minute class which I’ve managed to publish for free. Please do spread the forest garden word by sharing the class.

Hope Garden

Together with a very talented team, we are creating an RHS show garden for the Nature and Climate Emergency. At its heart lies a Community Assembly, in the midst of a wildlife forest garden 💚

A Community Assembly is an inclusive, structured space for reflective discussion and learning, where ideas are generated, decisions are made and action is taken. It is a form of direct democracy.

It is a facilitated, non-hierarchial space where everybody’s views are heard and valued. We want to use this space in the garden to bootstrap the practise of Community Assemblies, and to discuss the Emergency in a horticultural context, with a range of topics and input from experts.

The wildlife forest garden showcases the low carbon practises required to increase wildlife and native plant diversity, whilst simultaneously growing edible crops.

An organisation called Trust The People is running a free 8 week course on Community Assemblies in September, and I’ll keep posting updates about the garden here 😊

Online workshops

I gave an online workshop for the Birmingham & Black Country Wildlife Trust last night. They have an amazing 2 acre EcoPark site right in the city, and part of that is a 20m x 11m forest garden.

The workshop was great, focussing on public level access to forest gardening via the route of foraging.

If you’re interested in the content, the slides and notes are here natureworks.org.uk/talks/forage and I posted a trial run video on Youtube.

If you’re interested in hiring me to run a workshop, drop me an email hello@natureworks.org.uk

Forge garden design project

Birdseye view of the new project

I’m very lucky to have a new garden design project, codenamed Forge. It’s in the middle of Ceredigion, and the client is looking for advice on low-maintenance ornamental planting for a holiday let, a vegetable growing area & polytunnel, and lots of lots grass in a field. There will be trees.

I’m making a site visit next week for a survey and to write up suggestions. Before starting, there are a few suggestions that are useful for many people:

1. Mow a perimeter path around large grass areas, which stops bramble from creeping in.

2. Divide the garden into different areas for different functions using paths.

3. Break the job down into manageable chunks. Once you have your infrastructure in place (structures, canopy layer, windbreaks), concentrate on one area at a time.

I will be looking at existing plants, possiblities for wildlife habitat, sizes for trees and opportunities for glorious swatches of colourful native wild flowers.

If you would like your garden designed, I have details about my design process on my website and feel free to email me hello@natureworks.org.uk

Forest garden photos

Gary getting stuck in to the primary school garden creation!

Glorious combination of Lavender in flower and sedum about to flower shortly

Privet Hawkmoth caterpillar, precarious by the rose 'James Galway'

Native Honeysuckle in bloom, scented gloriously

Common Knapweed in full flow

Inspirational quote

Quick links

• Updated resources - I have updated my resources page with a couple of apps: Pl@ntNet, iNaturalist and Seek.

• The Nextdoor Nature Hub - a new venture by The Wildlife Trusts, designed to get people creating nature friendly habitat in their neighbourhood

• Buck Moon Newsletter - Another fabulous link filled newsletter from landscape ecologist Rebecca McMackin

• Plants, Wildlife and Polycultures for Forest Gardens and Regenerative Landscapes - lovely wide-ranging post by The Polyculture Project

• Polish Pickled Cherries - recipe from Robin Harford’s Eatweeds newsletter

Hire me

Wildlife and food forest garden designer, remote design a speciality, drop me an email hello@natureworks.org.uk

Thank you all, Jake

I am running an online workshop for a Wildlife Trust next week! It’s aimed at the general public and I am introducing forest gardening from the perspective of a wildlife garden and foraging, and then introducing other edible crops.

It’s amazing how many UK native species are edible, herbal or useful to humans in one way or another. Cross-referencing the brilliant Plants For A Future website, combined with the amazing botanical Plant Atlas, I have only found one native plant that I‘ve researched that isn’t listed on PFAF. If you’re interested, that plant is Barren Strawberry (Potentilla sterilis). Poor old Barren Strawberry. The good news is that it is a host plant to at least 9 inverterbrates.

These are the slides for the talk and these are the PDF notes ↗. Should be fun, wish me luck🤞

Forest Garden Primer

I nearly forgot to promote my new class! It’s a swift 20 minute introduction to forest gardening, jam packed with goodies and resources. As a special offer, you can download it for free with this link:

store.natureworks.org.uk/l/primer/freeprimer

Forest garden photos

Our first Walnut harvest!

View over the Nuttery

60cm of growth on the Walnut, due to the hot and dry early summer

Meadowsweet is coming into gloriously scented flower

My friend Martin gifted me these old but perfectly serviceable cleft Sweet Chestnut stakes, for dead hedges

Inspirational quote

Quick links

• Mandatory Swift bricks - UK petition for legislation to include nesting bricks for Swifts, which have declined 60% since 1995. Also, it is Swift Awareness Week.

• June Extremes Suggest Parts of the Climate System Are Reaching Tipping Points - Bad news, really bad news. Best had decarbonise as quickly as possible.

• One man’s mission to reforest a barren Irish hillside - Apparently his book An Irish Atlantic Rainforest is great as well!

• The Biodiversity Gardener - I love the Roots and All podcast, and this is a particularly brilliant one, Paul Sterry discusses wildlife gardening and his book The Biodiversity Gardener

Hire me

Wildlife and food forest garden designer. Remote design a speciality natureworks.org.uk/design

Work has finally started on my local primary school wildlife forest garden. There is a lot to do, the plan is for a seating area held by a gabion horseshoe-shaped wall, which will have integral seating and wildlife habitat (think bee logs, hoverfly lagoons etc). And then there's the labyrinth, the fruit trees, the native wild flowers….

It could be overwhelming but as the saying goes, “bird by bird”.

The seating area deturfed. We shall return with pickaxes to excavate the foundations

I’m very interested in the labyrinth. I hope to use recycled self-binding gravel as the hard standing material for the paths and seating area. It’s great, as it doesn’t require a plastic membrane and provides habitat for certain species of solitary bee. The idea is to use it for the labyrinth as well, and then form the shape using a different aggregate like crushed concrete, and grow Wild Thyme or another low profile native wild flower.

CAD plan showing the position and design of the labyrinth

If you’re interested in the detail, I have some notes and designs online at grwd.uk/primary

Forest Garden Primer class 🥳

It is party time, I have finished my new short class, the Forest Garden Primer! It’s only 20 minutes long but crams an awful lot in to a very little timespace. Use the discount code EARLYBIRDPRIMER to get 50% off, which means it will be £2 rather than £3.99.

My latest class, the Forest Garden Primer

In West Wales, we have had two days of intermittent rain in the past 7 weeks and it’s only mid-June. Now is the time for dramatic action on the Climate Crisis. For gardens, this means growing native plants & resilient perennial crops and creating wildlife habitat to counteract the massive loss to ecosystems caused by industrial agriculture.

This means planting trees in urban areas, to provide shelter, and clean and cool the air. It means creating wildlife allotments, so that everyone has access to green space to grow food, no matter where they live.

For economics, this means taking essential services (water, electricity, telecoms, travel) back into public ownership. The profit motive is only delivering dividends and bonuses, not the investment in the resilient infrastructure we require. Look at what is happening to the water supply in Kent. Look at the state of the River Wye.

I am going to start shifting the focus of my work toward climate activism. Yes, forest gardens are activism (the original Woke Gardening 😛) but they are even more powerful when delivered as a common good, properly funded and organised by and for the people.

Forest garden photos

Hawthorn Unknown - possibly Crataegus viridis?

Baby walnuts!

Maiden Pink (Dianthus deltoides)

Fungi. A photo I uncovered from a couple of years ago.

Inspirational quote

YouTube latest

Dead Hedge 101 — dead hedges explained in under a minute

I am very proud of this video, my first every YouTube Short ie it’s under 60 seconds. A good summary of what makes a dead hedge. And my 12yo edited the video as well!

Subscribe to my YouTube channel bit.ly/subscribe-natureworksgarden

Big list of handy resources

Head over to my resources page natureworks.org.uk/resources

Quick links

• Roots and All - My favourite podcast: always listening, always learning

• A Letter from a Million Years Past - Korean native plant herbal garden at Chelsea this year

• Saving moths may be just as important as saving the bees

• The Lost Forest Gardens of Europe

• Espalier - An Ancient Perennial Edible Art Project

Hire me

Wildlife and food forest garden designer for hire, remote design a speciality. Prices online.

We are living in the midst of a climate crisis, our economic systems are currently incompatible with life on earth. As you may know already, crisis comes from the Greek krisis, “turning point in a disease, that change which indicates recovery or death”. In other words, THERE IS EVERYTHING TO PLAY FOR.

Action is what we need, and you know best what form that action takes. Me? I make wildlife friendly forest gardens, build digital stuff for climate activists and write countless indignant letters. Your skills, pleasures, inclinations, these will all differ, and it’s up to you to find out how best to step up to the climate challenge. The best thing is that, together, we are not alone.

Forest garden photos

Amazing display of Hawthorn flowers this year, whole branches bedecked with floriferousness

Also very dry and warm in West Wales, so that the willow seed has been accumulating in great gossamer drifts

They’re not pretty but dead hedges are so useful. Here, I have disposed of the carcass of an old rotten pallet

Lovely fragrance from Rose 'Blush Noisette' but would rather a simpler rose for pollinator access

Inspirational quote

YouTube latest

4 stages of creating a garden: survey, design, framework & area. This is maintaining garden at the framework stage

Subscribe to my YouTube channel grwd.cc/subscribe-natureworksgarden

Resources Special

I have made new resources page natureworks.org.uk/resources

Quick links

• A Curious Herbal - lovely post by the brililant Maria Popova about Elizabeth Blackwell’s 18th century Encyclopedia of Medicinal Plants

• Thrutopia - neither dystoptia nor utopia, thrutopia is a vision of a realistic way forard, an idea and article by Prof Rupert Read

• Seek - Brilliant realtime app for ID plants, fungi and animals, from iNaturalist. What I love is that there are badges and levels, so I think it could work really well in a classroom setting.

• Planting potatoes, unearthing the past - Antonia Malchik hits it out the park, again. She writes so well, tying together people, places and ideas.

Hire me

Wildlife and food forest garden designer. My portfolio and design process & pricing are online.

Yesterday I was working at a client’s garden in the blazing sun and as I stepped beneath the canopy of an oak, I could feel the temperature drop. We need to build resilient ecosystems in our gardens around about now, which in the UK is shrubs and trees, native plants where possible, edible plants where you can.

At the moment, growing our own food for survival is unthinkable. The global network supplies us with foodstuffs from around the world which we can have delivered to our doors the very next day. A change is going to come though, and we need to start thinking about food security for everyone. A garden is a good place to start, and from there extend out into the wider landscape.

When I spoke with Farming Connect the other week about becoming a mentor, the question they asked was “What do you think is the biggest concern facing Welsh agriculture?” The Climate Emergency, of course! But there are no provisions in Farming Connect to provide more resilient agriculture (plant-based, perennial, low input) in the face of extreme drought and weather events.

We have to start somewhere, and the garden is a good place to practise growing resilient food crops and spread these forest garden ideas further. It is work, much like other gardening: weeding, tending, watering, moving, shielding, thinking, connecting. It is good work though, and it begins every day. This is the work. Get cracking.

Forest garden photos

Very orange Welsh Poppies (Papaver cambricum), glorious showing this year

Gabion pillar, filled with local stone, bee logs, bamboo canes, topped with recylced slates for shelter & bricks

Bugle (Ajuga reptans) is a brilliant UK native ground cover, here with Germander Speedwell (Veronica chamaedrys)

Inspirational quotes

Quick links

• Thrutopia - neither utopia nor dystopia, a practical visioning proposed by Rupert Read

• Native garden designs - a great idea, collecting examples of USA native plant garden designs. Be nice to have a UK equivalent…

• Soft Landings - inverterbrates in keystone trees need soft landings and habitat beneath the trees if they are to flourish

• Plant brains - yes, plants have “brains”

• Soil history - soil didn’t just materialise, it co-evolved with plants

A big thank you to Rebecca McMackin for her amazing newsletter, from whence many links are purloined.

NB this is an archived copy of the newsletter when it was on Gumroad.

Once upon a time, I had a newsletter on Mailchimp. Then I moved to Substack, because it seemed easier. And then I found out that the Substack CEO refuses to say whether he would ban explicitly racist content (the answer, if you need to know, is yes). Time to move newsletters again.

Now I am on Gumroad, the platform I use for my store, and they provide a simple newsletter (like this one). Do note that there is not an autosave or a shortcut for adding links. I am speaking from bitter experience 😐

I am also aware many of you as customers will not have signed up for a newsletter. There is an unsubscribe link at the bottom, please feel free to use it; as an avid newsletter unsubscriber, I understand the limits on your time.

The newsletter will be once every couple of weeks, and will be a round-up of my blog posts, and links and photos that I’ve posted to the exclusive Guild of Forest Gardeners Telegram group (email me if you’d like to join) and my Mastodon account.

Photos

Bladdernut (Staphylea pinnata) small fast growing shrub with edible seeds

Ramsons (Allium ursinum) flowering in the Ceri valley. Likes damp, rich soil & part shade.

Sweet Woodruff (Galium odoratum) making a glorious ground cover in a client’s woodland garden

Classes

My Backyard Forest garden online course is full of information but it is a chonky 3¾ hours of video. I am reworking some of the content and creating fresh content to make a series of 45 minute classes. These will be easier to digest, and easier for me to update.

The full list of classes is here natureworks.org.uk/classes and I have started work already with the CAD for Gardeners class, 50% off with the code MASTOMAX.

Garden designer for hire

Oh yes, that is me. I am open for new garden design projects, remote garden design a speciality. I’ve worked on all sizes and types of forest garden, from a small ornamental clifftop garden to a 2 acre walled garden in Scotland.

I added my prices to the website, to make the process and costs more transparent.

Quick links

• I added Robert Hart’s seminal book Forest Gardening to my Bookshop.org shop

• Robert Hart was inspired by Toyohiko Kagawa, an agroforestry pioneer in Japan

• Toyohiko Kagawa was inspired by reading J Russell Smith’s 1929 book “Tree Crops—A Permanent Agriculture”

• And now some bad news, “We Are Going To Run Out Of Food” — 7 Reasons There’s Going To Be A Global Famine Time to get planting that forest garden…

I moved the Nature Works newsletter to Substack back in October because it has an easy to use interface. But:

“Substack CEO refuses to say whether he would ban explicitly racist content”

The answer, if you needed prompting, is yes.

So, I have moved the newsletter to my Gumroad page. This is an easy decision for me to make, as I don’t make any money from the newsletter, whereas some writers I follow like Antonia Malchik and Aaron Rupar are heavily invested in the platform, and they can’t just up sticks.

The bad news, I can’t transfer my newsletter over to Gumroad until I have made 1,000 sales (something, something, spam?) If you’d like to catch up with my weekly-ish newsletters, you’ll need to subscribe on my Posts page.

Hopefully I’ll see you soon 🙂

It’s been a tough couple of years. I feel I can say that for pretty much everyone in the UK, top 1% excepted. My garden design business* has taken a hit in the past six months, I think because people are battening down the hatches and focussing on essentials like eating and keeping warm, not “luxuries” like gardens. (A whole other discussion, are gardens essential for well-being?) This means we’re having to downsize, which is a bit dispiriting, as we’ve invested so much in our dream house and gardens*. Hey ho, at least we have a house to sell. Enough moroseness, on with the pretty pictures and information!

* warning, advertising links

Pretty pictures

I have very much been getting in to the #Mosstodon hashtag over on Mastodon. Exploring the Ceri valley is good for the soul and kind-of-a-break from gardening, whilst learning about your local environment is great for knowing what plants will do well in your garden.

Quick links

• The perennially brilliant Backyard Larder for perennial veg, run by Alison Tindale

• The book Sarn Helen by Tom Bullough, recommended by Helen

• Endangered insects photographed in unprecedented detail, New Scientist article via Chris

• Insects are vanishing worldwide via doomster Jake

• Eatweeds podcast by Robin Harford, again (I think) because there is so much good stuff in there

• International Forest Garden Symposium — currently running this week. Some really good talks, all recorded and stored for 6 months, worth catching up if you can afford it. Wish I had more time to participate in the Q&As. The slides for my talk are here Intersectional Gardening.

Apologies for the pause in newsletters. I’m going to ask my forest garden friends for their photos to jolly things along for future editions.

We are in a Nature and Climate Emergency, the world needs to act like our house is on fire. Instead, we are mining for coal and drilling for oil.

We need a Green New Deal and for a dramatic shift to degrowth, renewables and ecological restoration. And we need to pay people (like, ahem, me) to do this.

I love what I do. I love gardening, wild flowers, native plants, climate activism, design, geeking out, teaching, being in beautiful places, doing the right thing and creating postivity in the world.

I do my fair share of unpaid work (primary school garden, wildlife allotments, native plant & forest garden spreadsheets etc.). I also want to get paid properly for the skill and passion I bring to my work.

If we lived in a country with a Universal Basic Income and Universal Basic Services (way to go for a more equal society and an end to bullshit jobs), I would do what I am doing now, although in a Gift Economy setting. But we don’t, and I can’t. I need to earn £450 a day.

And if you’ve ever been freelance, self-employed or run your own business, you will know that it is never £450 a day. That’s what I charge only the filthiest of the richest of my clients, and only when I’m working for them. All that reading, learning, thinking, admin, banking other stuff, none of that is chargeable.

Whilst we live in a society enthrall to money, then the best we can do is to shift our priorities and value “key workers” by paying them a decent salary and stop giving rich people tax breaks.

CAD for Gardeners

My online class to help you learn CAD for garden design is up and running. Use the code SubstackLovelies or this link to get about ⅔ off, so about £9.99 rather than £29.99 (sorry, the discounts are calculated in dollars before VAT so I find it hard to keep track of what the final cost is!!)

Quick Links

• Prairie Up, new native plant gardening book by Benjamin Vogt. US but useful.

• Critique of permaculture design by Eliza Daley. My jury is out but interesting reflections.

• My YouTube channel! Getting back into livestreaming youtube.com/NatureWorksGarden

• Native plant & herbs nurseries from recent livesteam

  • Garden Wild Spreadsheet bit.ly/garden-wild-spreadsheet

  • The Wild Flower Nursery, Pembs thewildflowernursery.co.uk

  • Celtic Wild Flowers, Swansea celticwildflowers.co.uk

  • Norfolk Herbs norfolkherbs.co.uk 

  • Plant Wild, Somerset plantwild.co.uk

  • British Wild Flower Plants, Norfolk wildflowers.uk

Winter ought to be a quiet time, now that the ground is frozen, the plants have stopped growing and we’ve been plunged into economic chaos by a callous and blundering political elite. But I have been busy, creating a ‘CAD for Gardeners’ online class.

As a special winter treat for all my subscribers, use the code SubstackLovelies to get a 66% discount, so £9.99 rather than £29.99. Or use this link:natureworksgarden.gumroad.com/l/cad/SubstackLovelies

I’ve decided to move away from the monolithic structure of my all-encompassing Backyard Forest garden online course. Instead, I am creating a series of 1-hour classes. They’re easier to create and update, and people can pick the classes that suit them best.

I say easier to create, I’ve worked out that it’s taken me 9 whole days to make a 1 hour class! Eek. I can get this down to 7 days, now that I have my software, workflow and templates set up. But still.

Geek out

For anyone who is even mildly interested in what I used to create the classes, here’s a quick list.

• OBS Studio for livestreaming & recording

• KDENlive for video editing

• Ocenaudio for audio editing

• GIMP for cropping photos

• Inkscape for creating graphics

• Sublime Text for editing subtitles

• WebVTT subtitle converter

• Gumroad for selling classes (10% fee)

• Udemy for marketing & selling classes (50% fee)

Gardens. And breathe…

All the CAD is great but I’ve had too much recently. Amidst computer-headspace, I’ve been reinvigorating a woodland bed at a client’s house near Cardigan. It’s a stunning spot, overlooking the Teifi valley. I’m going to plant a couple of blueberry bushes, some garden rhubarb and a whole stack of native woodland plants and herbs. I’m still sketching things out, will write up an update of the final planting scheme soon.

Quick links

• My updated classes! natureworks.org.uk/classes

• Eatweeds podcast by Robin Harford. Really rather good.

• Gwyrddni, organisation hosting Community Assemblies in Wales. Participatory democracy is good for the environment.

• Wildlife Gardening Forum some useful info on wildlife and plants

Welcome to my most clickbait title yet. Surely, we want our gardens to be as productive as possible? Yes, but, it depends.

The problem is with how we define productivity. I worked on a market garden for a few months, a lovely vegan and pretty much organic outfit run by dedicated owners. It was relentless outdoor factory work: sow-plant-weed-water-harvest-repeat. They had to be productive to make the books balance.

I tried introducing perennial vegetables but there’s no way they would fit with commercial pressures. “I know what I like and I want what I know” is the punter’s view and the punter is always, always right. So, annual vegetables and regular applications of compost are the order of the day.

A food forest garden is different, not dancing to the tune of capitalistic commercial pressures. We have an obsession with yield, rather than looking at the bigger picture, the ROI rather than WTF. And if you’re looking at the Return On Investment, you are ignoring the externalities as best you can, passing the buck on greenhouse gas emissions and pollution. The tragedy of the uncommons.

The question “is it economically viable?” needs replacing with “is it ecologically viable?”.

The bottom line is, we need to decommodify food. This doesn’t mean getting rid of money, rather it means growing local and socialised food, paying for what we need to eat, rather than making a profit for the farm as a business. We need to grow enough, not more.

In the UK we are all subject to the same failing market forces, where the majority have to work all hours to pay the bills, rather than work to improve our lives and where we live. This means that many don’t have the time, resources and education to grow edible crops in our own corner of the world.

Garden Wild Flowers

In the depths of the harshest/mildest winter, I’m putting together a series of short videos about UK native wild flowers. The YouTube playlist is here, and my continually updated Mastodon thread is here.

I still have a great deal to learn about using native plants in my own gardening practise, and these livestreams are part of my education. Hopefully you will find them useful as well.

Quick Links

These are the resources I use for the Garden Wild Flowers project

• Garden Wild Spreadsheet - about 100 UK native wild flowers

• Plants For A Future - incredible online database of useful plants

• Plant Atlas - botanical reference for UK & Ireland native plants

• RHS Plant Finder - ornamental plants mostly, some natives & nativars

• Wikimedia Commons - amazing resource of open license photos

• Database of Insects & their Food Plants - who is eating what native plant in your garden

And one unrelated link, a scientific study that shows ”College education partly explained differences in neighborhood plant diversity”.

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.

As well as my design work for private clients and setting up a Wildlife Allotment in the town, I’m also helping create a wildlife and food forest garden for my local primary school. [Declaration of Interest: it’s where my 7 year old goes!]

In the summer, I met up with the school’s Eco Council a couple of times, and I talked about common native plants and the insects that feed on them.

I also discussed the philosophical concept of Ecocentrism (as opposed to Biocentrism and Anthropocentrism)! This was surprisingly well received, summed up in the deceptively simple question “Is a river alive?”.

Last week we started on the actual design process. This boils down to writing a list of features that you’d like, roughly measuring up the space to see what can go where, sketching the ideas out with pencil and paper, then drawing up a plan (I use CAD because it’s what I do for a living but you can use pencil and 5mm grid paper just as effectively).

The key features for the garden are:

1. Quiet seating

2. Labyrinth

3. Wildlife habitat

4. Art class material

5. Edible berries

The initial idea is to use hand-crafted gabions for the wall around the seating area, and recycled building “waste” for filling the gabions, the labyrinth and paths. Big respect to John Little for his inspirational work.

Once I have created a design, we will mark up the areas in-situ with trusty old bamboo and baking twine. Then we calculate the costs of the materials and put out a clarion call for volunteers.

It’s also a very good idea to draw up a schedule. Gardens can take years to fully develop, particularly when budgets are tight. By staging the work, you keep up the momentum and celebrate the achievements as you go along.

As with all my clients, the notes, plant lists and designs are online: grwd.uk/primary

I believe it’s so important for all children to have access to wildlife and to see how their food is grown, and so school gardens are central to this If only they were properly funded.

Mastodon Sanctuary

At the hands of a billionaire egomaniac, Twitter has descended into some sort of nasty, vindictive hellscape. I quit. My locked account is still there but I left today. Here’s some handy instructions on How To Leave Twitter.

Now I am on Mastodon. It is calmer, it is nicer, without advertising. I like it. You can find me here mas.to/@natureworks and there are some rather handy tips here fedi.tips They even have #Mosstodon, utterly delightful.

Quick links

• It’s official, Rebecca McMackin has the best ecological gardening newsletter

• Best bird feeding practices, A Way To Garden podcast with Julie Zickefoose

• Practise ‘reconciliation ecology’, amazing article by Benjamin Vogt, Are We Rewilding

• Martin Crawford discusses which grape vines are adapting to climate change

• And finally, who knew that Medlars are called Hundsarsch in parts of Germany?!

Despite reading the news, you might know that we are in a Climate and Ecological Emergency. Just like the mainstream media, I won’t dwell on the details, suffice to say that we’re going to need robust climate resilience infrastructure pretty darned quick.

Without a sense of urgency from our national governments, I think our best bet is co-ordinated local action. A