The Home-Scale Forest Garden: How to Plan, Plant, and Tend a Resilient Edible Landscape

by Dani Baker

Overview

*2023 GardenComm Media Awards Gold Laurel Medal of Achievement

Learn how to create an edible forest garden—perfect for gardeners and growers at any scale!

Includes over 100 cold-hardy berry bushes, fruit and nut trees, perennial vegetables, herbs, edible flowers, mushrooms, and more.

When market gardener Dani Baker attended a permaculture workshop at her local Cooperative Extension office in upstate New York, she was inspired by its message of working with nature to create a thriving edible garden ecosystem. She immediately launched a new experiment she dubbed the “Enchanted Edible Forest.” In The Home-Scale Forest Garden, Baker shares what she learned as she became a forest gardener, providing a practical, in-depth guide to creating a beautiful, bountiful edible landscape at any scale—from a few dozen square feet to an acre or more.

Baker provides information on planning, planting, and maintaining a resilient forest garden ecosystem, including:

•   Using permaculture principles
•   Observing and mapping your space
•   Building planting beds, including hügelkultur mounds
•   Coping with saturated soil
•   Matching perennial edible plants to the right growing conditions
•   Grouping plants in diverse layers that attract and shelter beneficial insects and birds
•   Creating microclimates to increase the range of plants you can grow
•   Pruning, propagating, managing pests, and more
•   Expending less energy for greater reward

The Home-Scale Forest Garden is complete with descriptions of over 100 food-bearing and multifunctional plants for every layer of a forest garden: overstory and understory trees, shrubs, herbaceous plants, groundcovers, vines, and mushrooms, too.

The book includes over 200 photographs taken over 10 years of forest development, along with illustrations of a garden layout and special plant groupings for a range of conditions, including hot, dry sites and shady, moist sites.

Throughout, Baker candidly shares both her mistakes and her successes to help readers better understand the dynamics of a forest garden as it grows and changes over time. From her Asian Pear Adventure and Tamarack Travesty to her discoveries of unique ways to rescue and transplant tree seedlings, readers will appreciate the practical advice as she recounts lessons learned from her grand edible gardening experiment.

This is the perfect guide for gardeners of all experience levels who want to work with nature’s model and expand the range of food crops they grow as they embark on their own forest garden adventure.

"Experienced gardeners with a serious interest in sustainability would do well to check this out."—Publishers Weekly

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781645020981
Publisher:	Chelsea Green Publishing
Publication date:	05/20/2022
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	370,652
Product dimensions:	8.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 1.25(d)

About the Author

Dani Baker and her partner, David Belding, farm at Cross Island Farms on Wellesley Island in the St. Lawrence River between New York and Canada, where they raise certified organic produce and grass-fed beef and goats. Dani is a retired clinical psychologist and a self-taught gardener who learned her craft by immersing herself in reading, poring over nursery catalogs, attending workshops on permaculture and gardening, and enthusiastic trial-and-error experimentation. Dani now conducts workshops and tours at her edible forest garden as well as giving presentations at organic farming conferences and other venues. She takes particular pleasure in inspiring others to try their hand at incorporating permaculture principles in their gardens.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Planning and Planting Your Garden

1 Starting a Forest Garden Adventure 1

2 Letting Nature Do the Work 11

3 Planning Your Forest Garden 27

4 Implementing Your Plan 47

5 Planting and Tending Your Garden 69

Part 2 Plants for Every Level

6 Choosing Plants 89

7 The Overstory 99

8 The Understory 117

9 Shrubs 145

10 Herbaceous Plants 183

11 Ground Covers 215

12 Vines and Fungi 237

Part 3 Creating Plant Groupings

13 Plant Grouping Basics 257

14 Grouping Plants in Diverse Habitats 271

Acknowledgments 296

Appendix 1 Nutrient Accumulators 297

Appendix 2 Flowering and Harvest Times 300

Appendix 3 Stewardship through the Seasons 306

Glossary 309

Resources 311

Selected Bibliography 313

Index 315

Editorial Reviews

03/07/2022

Baker, a farmer, harnesses “the full power of nature” in this practical guide to forest gardening. Inspired by a course in farming organically, Baker created a half-acre edible garden and shares with readers how to create a “resilient and regenerative” garden of their own, whether it’s a small or large plot, where “nature serves all the roles,” including weeding, watering, fertilizing, and managing pests. She makes recommendations for choosing and grouping plants, such as shrubs (an “encouraging” layer because they can bear fruit soon after planting) and herbaceous plants (which die back in winter and grow again in spring) like “must-have” peonies, and shares some expert tricks (plant daffodils as a weed and rodent deterrent, and stomp on the shoots of coneflowers to help them compost). Throughout, Baker reflects on her own learning process, including making such mistakes as overinsulating some berries and poisoning herself by squashing caterpillars. Her way of gardening requires a long view, she writes: “It will take many years, perhaps beyond my lifetime, to determine whether some of my choices were correct.” While Baker comes across as knowledgeable, her delivery’s a bit on the dry side. Experienced gardeners with a serious interest in sustainability would do well to check this out. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"Experienced gardeners with a serious interest in sustainability would do well to check this out."—Publishers Weekly

“The Home-Scale Forest Garden is a thoroughly enjoyable read, with lots of good photos and illustrations. I particularly enjoyed reading about forest gardening in a colder winter climate and found Dani’s strategies for dealing with wet flooded ground, very heavy soil, deer attacks, and many other challenges both fascinating and inspirational. This book should be of great use to anybody making a forest garden on any scale.”—Martin Crawford, author of Creating a Forest Garden and founder, Agroforestry Research Trust

“Dani Baker enriches cold-climate forest gardening with candid details of successes and (importantly) failures in her decade-old forest garden. The Home-Scale Forest Garden serves as a guide to anyone who wishes to plant one, and includes valuable experience with challenges including some very wet soils. Featuring over 200 beautiful color photographs from the garden.”—Eric Toensmeier, author of Perennial Vegetables and co-author of Edible Forest Gardens

“Dani Baker generously shares the gems of her forest garden journey, offering insights of her successes, mishaps, and inspirations that culminate in the delicious fruits of her labor. Her vision, supported by a depth of teachers and study, guides readers in learning the art of edible abundance. Whether your goals include greater harvests, landscape beauty, or diversity of species, I highly recommend The Home-Scale Forest Garden as a resource for the land steward in us all.”—Katrina Blair, author of The Wild Wisdom of Weeds

“We need many more examples of forest gardens, food forests, and permaculture orchards, and The Home-Scale Forest Garden will help inspire and direct you on the adventure of planning, planting, and tending your garden abundance. Dani Baker does a wonderful job introducing the uninitiated to permaculture principles in a clearly understandable way. Once you experience abundance from your forest garden, your life changes. A forest garden, as Dani explains so simply and beautifully, will get you to that abundance.”—Stefan Sobkowiak, permaculture educator and YouTuber; owner, Miracle Farms: The Permaculture Orchard

“This book brings to life the visual beauty and the diverse productivity a perennial landscape can offer to anyone looking to get started or improve on what they’ve created. Forest gardening can often feel intimidating, but Dani Baker’s unique experience coupled with her friendly tone and plenty of details on the best plants, placement, and companions provides anyone interested in building a food forest with a plethora of material to help them succeed.”—Steve Gabriel, co-author of Farming the Woods; author of Silvopasture; extension specialist, Cornell Small Farms Program

“Working with the natural world in our gardens has never been more important with the challenges we now face through climate change. Forest gardening offers hope, inspiration, and solutions for the future, and Dani Baker shows gardeners how to embrace this important method on a smaller scale. Build resilience and create a low maintenance edible haven with this accessible guide.”—Kim Stoddart, editor, The Organic Way magazine; co-author of The Climate Change Garden

"Dani Baker is the dreamer and planner behind the Enchanted Edible Forest. She shares experienced, friendly advice for gardeners of all experience levels....With fun stories, a methodical organization, and helpful appendices, this is a great primer full of  gardening expertise."—Foreword Reviews

From the Publisher