Knowledge · Forest garden
A forest garden takes the structure of a natural woodland edge and turns it into land that produces food. Trees, shrubs, herbs, ground covers and root crops grow in storeys, one above the other, and share light, water and nutrients instead of each competing for them alone. Once established, such a planting keeps producing for decades, with no ploughing and no yearly resowing. And along the way it does work that society otherwise pays for: holding water, building soil, storing carbon, cooling the landscape.
A forest garden is a planting that copies the structure of a natural woodland edge but is made up almost entirely of useful species. Trees, shrubs, perennials, ground covers, root crops and climbers grow in up to seven layers, one above the other. Once established, it provides fruit, nuts, berries, herbs and wood for decades, with no ploughing and no yearly resowing.
You will also hear it called a food forest, and the practice forest gardening; close relatives are agroforestry and permaculture. How it differs from a traditional meadow orchard or a typical home garden: there, a single storey of trees stands above mown grass or vegetable beds. In a forest garden every storey is filled, from the canopy to below ground, and hardly any open lawn is left. It looks denser and wilder, more like a jungle than an orchard.
The storeys
The classification goes back to the English forest garden pioneer Robert Hart. It describes which plants use which light and which root space, and so how many plants can fit on one piece of land without crowding each other out.
tall trees, over 10 m (33 ft)
The roof of the forest garden. It casts the most shade, provides nuts, fruit and timber, and determines what can grow beneath it.
Walnuts, sweet chestnuts, service tree and other whitebeams, cherries, lindens
small trees, 3-10 m (10-33 ft)
Fruit trees on semi-vigorous rootstocks and species with small crowns. In a small garden, this is the top storey.
shrubs, 0.5-5 m (1.5-16 ft)
Berries and nuts in the dappled shade of the trees, plus nitrogen fixers such as autumn olive, sea buckthorn or alder that feed their neighbours.
Hazels, blackcurrants, chokeberries, serviceberries, autumn olives
perennials and herbs, up to about 1.5 m (5 ft)
Perennial vegetables, culinary and medicinal herbs, plus dynamic accumulators whose leaves are left in place as mulch.
creeping or low, under 0.5 m (1.5 ft)
Living mulch: keeps the soil covered and moist and leaves little room for weeds.
below ground
Tubers and root vegetables, plus deep-rooted plants that break up compacted soil.
Jerusalem artichoke, chicory, onions and leeks
vertical, on trees and supports
They use height without building a trunk of their own. They need a strong host: a tree that can bear the weight.
The examples show what can belong in a layer. They are not a planting recommendation. What fits where in your garden depends on climate, soil, light and on what you want to use the garden for. A nitrogen fixer that is worth its weight in gold on poor sandy soil is more likely to make extra work on rich garden soil. Worked-out combinations are on the plant guilds page, the order of planning in How to plant a forest garden.
Here is how to find your favourites for each layer: from the plant database, matched to your climate, grouped by layer. In the app the classification is graded more finely by height than the seven layers above; the tree layer, for example, is split into three height bands.
Some add an eighth layer: fungi. They connect roots with the soil and help decide which species grow well side by side. More on this under mycorrhiza. You can filter which species belongs in which layer in the Plant Finder.
Structure
In a closed forest, hardly any light reaches the ground, so very little that you can eat grows there. At the woodland edge, by contrast, trees, shrubs and perennials step down from tall to low, and that is where diversity is greatest. A forest garden recreates this edge and makes it as long as possible (more on that in a moment). It usually opens to the south (in the northern hemisphere): tall trees on the north side, the lower ones in front of them, and shrubs, perennials and ground covers along the sunny edge. That way every storey gets its light.
There is a reason the woodland edge, of all places, is the model, and permaculture has made it one of its core rules: the edge effect. Where two habitats meet (woodland and meadow, water and land, hedge and bed), you find the species of both sides plus some that live only there. Ecologists call this transition zone an ecotone. Light and shade, moisture and dryness, root space and open soil all come together here; this is where the most niches are, and so the most life. Bill Mollison turned this into a design rule, and David Holmgren sums it up as a principle: Use edges and value the marginal.
The conclusion is simple: more edge, more life, more yield. A straight line between a row of trees and a meadow is the shortest boundary there is. The same area with scalloped bays has an edge almost twice as long. Taken to its logical end, this leads to the fractal: a line like the edge of the Mandelbrot set or a coastline, which reveals new bays every time you look more closely and becomes infinitely long within a limited area. Nature builds like this all the time: woodland edges, river deltas, leaf veins, roots.
In the garden, the fractal idea has a practical limit: a bay is only worth as much as what fits into it. If it is narrower than the crown of a shrub, it closes up within a few years and the edge turns back into a line. Too much edge also means work: every edge is a place where grass creeps in and needs mowing. So the art is not infinite edge but edge at the scale of the plants: bays as large as the guild that is meant to stand in them, nested in several sizes, with large bays for trees and small ones along their rim for berries and herbs. That is exactly where the fractal lies.
The best-known form is the sun trap: a horseshoe-shaped bay that opens to the south, tall at the back and low at the front. It catches light and warmth, keeps out the wind and is noticeably warmer than the open ground next to it. It is the spot for warmth-loving species such as persimmon, fig or apricot. A forest garden made of several such bays has an edge many times longer than its outer boundary.
You do not plan layer by layer across the whole site, but tree by tree. Around each large tree grows a small group of partners that benefit it: a nitrogen fixer, a dynamic accumulator, a ground cover, something that attracts beneficial insects. These groups are called plant guilds. At heart, a forest garden is an alliance of guilds.
The structure is not fixed. In its first years a forest garden is a sunny perennial garden with small trees; after fifteen years it is an open woodland. What stands in the sun today will then be in partial shade, and light-hungry species move out to the edge. Fast-growing nurse trees (poplar, alder, autumn olive) protect the young trees and are removed once they are no longer needed. If you think about this while planning, you save yourself transplanting later. How to see your garden twenty years from now before you plant is covered in step 7 of the guide.
What makes a forest garden different
Because it combines two things that farming usually keeps apart: the yield of a crop and the self-organisation of a forest. A field produces one crop and has to be worked again every year to do so. An orchard uses a single storey and leaves grassland underneath. A forest garden stacks trees, shrubs, herbs, ground covers and root crops on top of each other and uses the same land several times over: in height, in depth and across the year.
The result is a system that does part of its own work: nutrient cycling, shade, shelter from the wind, pest control. What a field gets from outside as fertiliser, tillage and crop protection, a forest garden produces between its species. Once established, such a planting keeps producing for decades, which is why forest gardeners like to say: plant once, harvest forever.
Yes, and that is one of the main reasons to plant one. Leaves and prunings stay on site and build humus. Nitrogen fixers such as alders, autumn olives or lupins feed their neighbours. Deep-rooted plants draw nutrients and water from layers that annual crops never reach, and at night they release some of that water into the topsoil, a process known as hydraulic lift.
The diversity of species keeps pests in check, because beneficial insects find food and shelter all year round. Much of what you would otherwise have to buy in, the system largely takes care of itself.
A good part of this happens below ground, through the fungal partners on the roots, and that is where it is decided which species can stand side by side. What lies behind it, and what remains of the story of the underground network: Mycorrhiza: which plant goes with which fungus.
It breaks it up, from below. Deep-rooted species such as chicory, comfrey or elecampane push through compacted layers and leave root channels behind that let water and air in. Over the years a living soil develops that soaks up rain instead of letting it run off.
The numbers
It depends on what you count. If you only look at the sales revenue of a single crop, the field usually wins. If you also count what a hectare does besides (storing water, holding soil, capturing CO₂, cooling, habitat, recreation), the picture changes. Floods, drought damage and soil loss cost society billions. A forest garden offsets exactly that. Once ecosystem services are rewarded, it is among the most productive forms of land use we have.
Then there is risk. A model by the US Forest Service compared agroforestry with pure arable farming and pure tree plantations: arable farming alone was not clearly ahead in any risk scenario, and as soon as the risk of crop failure rises (for instance through more frequent droughts and floods), agroforestry came out with higher average yields and lower risk.
In plain English: there is always something to harvest, whether wood, fruit, nuts or field crops. A total crop failure becomes very unlikely.
Side by side, not at odds
It brings both together instead of playing one off against the other. Grassland, conservation and cultivation do not exclude each other when you plan them as one system: flowering trees and shrubs for insects, deadwood and hedges for birds, grazing under trees for livestock, and in between, a harvest for people.
Am I doing something for society with it? Yes. Every forest garden keeps water in the landscape, cools its surroundings, stores carbon and creates habitat. These are measurable benefits for everyone who lives nearby, not a mere side effect. Anyone who plants a forest garden makes a contribution that reaches far beyond their own fence.
The part no spreadsheet captures
Who wants to spend a relaxing Sunday in a maize field? A forest garden, on the other hand, is a place where people want to be: shade, birdsong, something to nibble. For farms, communities and schools, that is a benefit in its own right: a place that draws people in instead of keeping them out.
A forest garden makes sense on every level and is the future. And it radiates peace and a feeling of home.
When you have had a picnic in March under snow-white, fragrant cherry plums with the birds in full song, enjoyed the first relaxed shade in May, stuffed yourself with juicy berries and fruit in July, and taken in the play of colour in the trees and shrubs, in light and shadow, as autumn comes, then you know you have arrived home.
And there is not much left to do here. Once it is planted, everything grows. You harvest here and there, cut back, take out a tree now and then, and that gives you wood for the fire or for your next build. And you have created something your grandchildren will still thank you for: a fertile, diverse and stable ecosystem that provides for many, with food and with beauty for all the senses. A work of art that does not gather dust but is alive, speaks to everyone and can keep on being shaped.
It feels good to work on something that is clearly right. No weighing up, no compromise. The soil gets better, the water stays, the animals come back, people eat from it. Anyone who has stood in a fifteen-year-old forest garden understands why people stick with it.
Taro, permaculture designer, forest gardener and founder of Permaplans (more about me)
Getting started
The permaculture principles are the first help. Three fit especially well here: “Observe and interact”, “Use small and slow solutions” and “Design from patterns to details”.
Because the other way round usually goes wrong: if you start planting straight away (trees, shrubs, perennials, ground covers), you lose a lot of it again and only realise afterwards that it does not fit yet.
Then there is natural succession. If all you have at the start is a meadow, you first plant a few pioneer trees and shrubs. They grow fast and create the conditions for your later productive plants: shelter from the wind, a microclimate, beneficial insects, mycorrhiza.
So before the first planting there is a sequence:
Only then do you plant. Good planning pays off, because afterwards much of it falls into place by itself. And for that you need the right tool. That is exactly what Permaplans is for.
The whole sequence (from observing through hedges and boundary distances to planting) is in the guide How to plant a forest garden in 8 steps.
Three things
At the opening event of a forest gardener training course, exactly this question was asked. The participants' answers came down to three things.
A forest garden is a complex system with a long time horizon: the decisions of the first year still matter twenty years later. Without a plan you plant too close, in the wrong spot, and only notice once the tree is big.
That is what Permaplans is built for: site data for your coordinates, over 1,100 species with mature size and growth rate, layers, yield forecasts over decades, and the time slider that shows what it will look like in ten years.
Nobody learns this alone. You need places where knowledge, experience and mistakes are shared: what worked for you and what did not, on which soil, in which climate.
In Permaplans you can share your garden, rate your experience with individual species and see what others have done under similar conditions.
Projects you can join. People looking for help. Land that needs someone. If you want to get started, you first need to see who else is out there.
That is exactly what the map makes visible.
That is why Permaplans is more than a drawing program: planning, knowledge and exchange belong together, because a forest garden does not come about without all three.