How to Plant a Forest Garden: Step by Step

Map and observe your land

Before anything is planted, put everything that is already there on a plan: the property boundary, buildings, existing trees and hedges, paths, driveways, utility lines, the compost heap, the spot where rainwater comes off the roof. The neighbourhood counts too. A tall house on the south side of the neighbouring plot casts a winter shadow that reaches far into your garden.

Then: observe. Ideally for a whole year, at least for one season. Where does water stand after heavy rain? Where does the frost linger longest in May? Which direction does the wind come from? Which corners get sun in June, and which in December? Note these observations on your plan, so they are right in front of you when you place the trees.

Check the site: climate, soil and water

Your site decides which species are even an option. What matters is not the region you live in, it is the exact spot in your garden. There are five things you should know:

• Hardiness: the lowest winter temperatures, expressed as a hardiness zone. A sweet chestnut tolerates much less frost than a hazel.
• Late frost: hollows and dips collect cold air. Early flowering species such as apricot or almond do not belong there.
• Soil: sand, loam or clay, the pH, whether there is lime in it. A spade and a pH test strip are enough to start with.
• Water: summer rainfall, groundwater, waterlogging. Walnuts like deep soils, alders like wet feet, sea buckthorn likes dry sand.
• Light: from step 1. Where is full sun, where is partial shade, where is shade?

The result is not a wish list. It is a filter: it rules out the species that would only survive with you if you gave them a lot of care. Whatever passes this filter is "suited to the site", and those are exactly the plants that will give you the least work later on.

Design concept: set goals and zones

A forest garden for walnuts and firewood looks different from one for berries and salad. Before you choose species, write down what you want to harvest, how much time you have each week and what else the space should be used for (children, chickens, a place to sit).

The zones follow from that. Whatever you need almost every day (herbs, salad, berries for snacking) belongs close to the front door. Whatever you harvest once a year (nuts, wood, storage fruit) can stand far away. It sounds obvious, yet it decides whether a forest garden gets used or goes wild.

Plan hedges, windbreaks and boundary distances

Before the trees you want to harvest from come the ones that protect everything else. A hedge on the weather side slows the wind, keeps moisture in the garden and gives a home to the birds and insects that will later keep pests in check. On a slope, plantings against erosion running across the gradient come first. A privacy screen towards the street, a quiet retreat, the paths: all of this sets the framework that everything else has to fit into.

Boundary distances are part of this. In Germany, Austria and Switzerland, neighbour law sets legal minimum distances that trees, shrubs and hedges must keep from the property boundary, usually graded by height (in Germany each federal state has its own rules). If you plant a walnut one metre from the boundary, you may have to fell it fifteen years later, or end up in a dispute with your neighbour. Outside these countries, check your local rules before planting near the boundary. You can find the distances for each region under Boundary distances for trees and hedges.

Collect favourites, place the big trees first

Before anything goes on the plan, collect every plant you would like to have: big and small, walnut and currant, the fruit from your childhood and the one you tried on holiday. This list is your raw material. It is almost always longer than the space allows, and that is fine.

Then the big trees come first. I call them the stars. They get their place before anything else is planned, because everything underneath depends on their shade. Only then do you look at which of your other favourites still fit, and where. Sometimes this shows that one big tree is too many: if you give up the second walnut, there is light and space left for five berry bushes and a quince tree. Trade-offs like these are the real core of planning.

• Plan with the mature size, not the planting size. A young walnut tree is two metres tall and as thin as a broomstick. In twenty years its crown can be ten metres across or more.
• Tall to the north, low to the south. In the northern hemisphere the tallest layer would otherwise cast its shade over everything below that needs light.
• Dense or at final spacing? Both work. Planting densely means thinning later, with a canopy that closes quickly and less grass. Planting at final spacing straight away means managing a lot of open ground at first. What matters is making a conscious choice and planning the thinning from the start.

The row of trees does not have to be a straight line. Most life happens where two habitats meet, so bays are worth more than straight edges, ideally as a sun trap: a horseshoe open to the south, tall at the back, low at the front, sheltered from the wind and warm. Why the edge gives you so much, and where its limit lies, is explained under The edge effect.

If you are short on space, use an apple or pear on a semi-vigorous rootstock as the tallest layer instead of the walnut. That can become a forest garden too, just a lower one. What counts is not height but density: a few fruit trees over a mown meadow are a traditional orchard, fruit trees over vegetable beds are a home garden. A forest garden only emerges when every layer under the trees is filled and hardly any open meadow is left. It then feels denser and wilder, more like a jungle than an orchard.

Plan the lower layers: shrubs, perennials, ground cover

Once the big trees are in place, go back to your list of favourites: which of them still fit, and where? Which areas stay sunny, which turn into partial shade, which will be under a canopy in ten years? There is no universal answer to this, because it depends on three things only you know:

• Design concept: Should this spot mainly grow fruit for the winter, berries for snacking, herbs for the kitchen, feed for chickens, wood for the stove?
• Feel of the space: Where do you want to walk through, where to sit, where should the view stay open, where can it get dense and wild?
• Way of harvesting: What do you pick every day in passing, what do you harvest once a year with a ladder and a crate? The first belongs by the path, the second can stand further back.

Then there are helpers that yield little or nothing themselves but benefit everything else: nitrogen fixers such as alders, Elaeagnus (autumn olive, oleaster) or lupins, dynamic accumulators such as comfrey, ground covers that keep the soil covered. Whether you need them, and how many, again depends on your site. On rich garden soil, a nitrogen fixer can even do harm.

That is why you will deliberately not find ready-made planting lists here. A suggestion that works beautifully in one garden is wrong in the next: different soil, different light, different purpose. A proven approach is to build a small group of partners around each big tree, called a guild. How that works, which roles there are, and worked examples are covered under Plant guilds. What the individual layers are is explained in the overview of forest garden layers.

Which species suit which layer?

This is how you find your favourites for the different layers: choose your climate, and the search shows what fits from the plant database, grouped by layer, with edibility, medicinal value and other uses at a glance.

Simulate growth: your forest garden in 20 years

A plan on paper shows the garden on planting day. That is exactly its problem: on planting day everything is small, sunny and far apart. The mistakes only show up later, when the sweet chestnut grows over the berry bushes after twelve years, two apple trees push their crowns into each other, or the path disappears under a hazel.

That is why a look into the future pays off before you plant. How big will each tree be in five, ten, twenty years? Where do crowns overlap? Where will shade fall that is sun today, and is there something there that needs light? Where are gaps left that you can fill with annuals, perennials or fast-growing nurse plants until the big trees are ready?

The rule of thumb: a forest garden moves. In year three it is a sunny perennial garden with small trees, in year fifteen a light, open woodland. What stands in the sun today will then be in partial shade. Good planning arranges the species so they can follow this change instead of growing against it.

Plant your forest garden: planting time, mulch and the first years

Plant between October and March, whenever the ground is not frozen. Bare-root trees and shrubs are only available during this window; they are cheaper than container plants and establish better. Planting in autumn has the advantage that the roots are already settled into the soil by spring.

• Mulch instead of digging. Cover grass and perennial weeds with cardboard, then add wood chips, leaves or straw on top. It saves work and protects soil life.
• Protect against voles. Where voles are around, every fruit tree needs a wire basket around its root ball. A single winter is enough to lose a young tree.
• Water in the first summer. Rarely but deeply: better twenty litres once a week than a little every day.
• Keep the grass short. In the first three years grass is the biggest competitor for water. A mulched tree circle one metre across makes a big difference.
• Start small. Better one guild a year that establishes well than the whole plan at once, only for it to dry out in the first dry summer.