by zteve t evans

Created on: July 10, 2011

A well designed forest garden  can be a productive and important part of a Permaculture, or low-impact living system providing food or other useful products in an environmentally friendly and sustainable way.

A young natural forest is a highly productive and self-sustaining eco-system so in forest garden design the essential principle are to reproduce those attributes for human benefit. Although a natural wild forest may look tangled and the trees placed randomly and haphazardly there is an inherent structure that helps to give it such great productivity.  Because different species of trees and plants grow to different heights a natural vertical structure to the forest evolves.

In forest garden design this is known as ‘layering’ and sometimes these layers are referred to as  ‘storeys’ or ‘stacks.’ This layering can often be seen best at the edges of forests where the height of the trees, shrubs, grasses and other plants diminish in size. 

Forest garden design

To design a forest garden that is productive and sustainable thought must be given to the creation of these layers. In some well established forest gardens in tropical regions of the world up to 13 layers have been recognised. 

Martin Crawford of the Agroforestry Research Trust  and author of ‘Creating a Forest Garden’ describes seven layers to a forest garden, but explains that in smaller areas there can be less.  This is because on small sites such as back gardens there may not be enough space to accommodate all of the layers especially the canopy so it may be necessary to use smaller trees that are more suitable to the space available.  Trees that are coppiced can be regarded as shrubs as can trees that are grown on a dwarfing rootstock, or pruned.

In some parts of the garden these layers may be separate while in other parts they intertwine.   Patrick Whitefield in his book ‘How to make a forest garden,’ uses three layers and points out that two layers can be used in smaller gardens.

The seven layers of a forest garden

Starting with the highest storey and working downwards in order the seven layers are the canopy, the under-storey, shrub, herbaceous, ground cover, climbers and vines, and finally, an underground layer.

The canopy layer

The highest layer is the canopy and consists of medium to large trees over 10m (33 feet) in height.  Fruit trees are often chosen for this layer

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