How to Make a Forest Garden, 3rd Edition

How to make a forest garden is an encyclopedic introduction to designing and maintaining a forest garden. Especially if you have a small garden, How to make a forest garden gives many interesting hints and advice. The author is a permaculturist, which permeates throughout the book. It is aimed at the Forest Gardener of Northwestern Europe. This is not the best book for Forest Gardening. The book from Crawford is much better, because it has been written 14 years later and because it is more complete.

Pretty impressed with this book. It is an excellent resource, and provides a very good introduction to forest gardening. This book will be most useful to people who live in the UK, but can be useful to anyone in a somewhat similar climate. My only real complaint is just that I wish it leaned more towards the use of native plants. Very glad that I own this book.

How to Make a Forest Garden is a slender volume at only 160 pages, but it covers the basics fairly well. Addressing many areas concerning this form of permaculture, I nonetheless felt that more illustrations and designs would have helped explain the many detailed and specific concepts covered here more fully. Whitefield's offering is good, I just wanted MORE!

Excellent book! Gives a lot of information for planning purposes, including diagrams and things I wouldn't have considered. Goes WAY beyond simply choosing plants that work together to include the uses of walls, manners of pruning (or not pruning) trees, and how a forest garden will morph over time as larger plants mature. As someone fairly new to gardening looking for a more technical book this was perfect.

I made a mistake when I ordered this book -- I didn't realize it was centered in Britain and as a result it was less useful for me. I did learn a few things, but I don't plan to keep the book. I have since seen it referenced in other texts and suspect it is an excellent book for someone in the UK.

I am tired of buying these great books, only to find out they are written for the British Isles. I am sure I can learn some principles from it, but all the sources are not for us in the USA. Couldn't this be stated in the description?

More for UK but a wonderful resource book for my new landscaping plan.

thank you

This is a fantastic book. Just what I was looking for. Don't be concerned about the black & white photos. Like many colour photos in other books, they are a mere guide. Besides, it's the info you want, and here it's priceless.I have just started to plant up my own forest garden on 2 acres of land, with almost no money left to spare. So the right advice for the best plants (which I grow entirely from seeds, cuttings, or by grafting, or through swapping with friends) is absolutely crucial.I have no room for making any economic mistakes here!Mr Whitefield encourages you to make the most of what nature has to offer in order to create your no-dig or restricted-dig forest garden, approaching the matter of mulches, weeds and pests in a sensible way. (So nice to see a keen gardener who understands that not everyone has access to 'Gardener's World' type TV budgets).There is advice on so many other aspects of 'healthier, greener' methods of growing food and materials (such as for basketry) it is almost impossible to list them all without writing down a good part of the book. There is careful consideration given to how best to plant the forest so that it gains the maximum levels of light for better growth, water usage & collecting, pruning.Even though my own embryonic-forest is only just starting to produce the odd berry and mushroom (and that's despite the fact that it still looks little more than a rather weedy field), through this book I have come to see that there are even more ways of raising foods & materials that will not compromise the balance of nature. Indeed, your mind begins to run riot and you start to see even more ways that the book doesn't include, so it is idea-inspiring too.As I have just started to introduce fungi species, with the intention of growing many more types of edible and symbiotic fungi, I was happy to see a couple of lengthy paragraphs have been included on this newly appreciated yet essential side to successful gardening. However, perhaps, in later editions, there could be a little more emphasis on this subject? Or perhaps another book?You don't need a big garden either. That point comes across very clearly. You can begin to raise your own mini-forest in a very small space indeed, and I'm not just talking about the pocket-handkerchief gardens that are squeezed in behind modern developments. Even a productive container or kitchen windowsill is given mention here. Having lived previously in a place with a 10 x 4 foot deeply-shaded concrete yard, I know it is possible to grow a reasonable amount of food in such places, with the added benefit that you know exactly 'how' that food was grown!

Clear, specific and well-written, this is a very good book. The experience of the author shows in his sensible observations and recommendations. Despite other reviews, I found the black-and-white pictures fine and effective, and don't think there is any need for colour. Colour merely uses more energy and resources for the same job.

It says it s easy to read and helpful to all levels of gardens - no its not. I could not understand a lot of the science, and it would take a lot of years to grow such a garden. I've managed it without the science, and in under a couple of short years

I've recently discovered Forest Gardening and have found this an interesting read. It's a little heavy going at times but generally well written.

A wonderful book on a hot topic. Really clear, really well laid out. I find it invaluable. Patrick Whitfield is a real expert and enthusiast, but the text is easy to follow and cooly written.Highly recommended.