Just write. When I write this blog I always start thinking I have something to say, something to write about. This time I think I want to write about my forest garden. I also ‘think’ I want to have a blog that I am writing. I want this to be it. I’ve chosen a picture. You can see it. It’s not a forest garden plant, it’s a rudbeckia I grew from seed last year. The seed came from an advent calendar that Sam gave me which had a packet of seed behind each window. Twenty-four packets of seed, and the plants that I grew from those packets made the garden beautiful last year. Some of the plants will persist into this year. Maybe this rudbeckia will come back. I hope so. Looking at the picture as I write I’m reminded of why I love gardening. The beauty, the serendipity, the love. It’s all there in the image, and it was there in the garden last year. The internal halo of fruiting stamens. The petals, perhaps thinking better of the orange dye and returning to the natural deep maroon. The raindrops, the lush green background. Smile. And this is a plant that is only there temporarily perhaps. It’s not really a forest garden plant, though it is a forest garden joy.

The forest garden is an edible garden. And if the plant is not edible it must provide something else. There is a laburnum tree in the garden and every part of it is poisonous but the roots fix nitrogen that provides fertility in the soil for other plants. Because I will harvest many crops in the garden, removing fertility, I need plants to restore the balance.

Part of my forest garden is a database of plants and locations, a developmental record of the garden. Another thing I have are many photographs, one of which is the header to this post. And maybe I will also have this blog. And of course there is the actual garden and my allotment. They are both run in similar ways.

Add to this a growing knowledge of what I am doing and what other people are doing, and it all makes up a thing.

So this is a start at the blog part. There have been lots of other starts, as can be seen in the archive. This is one more. I hope it will become regular. This is a short start. I will finish with a mention of my latest obsession: Landrace gardening. It is so exciting to know about this. A search brings up the book by Joseph Lofthouse and he is the person who introduced this to me. It is magnificently simple. Plants grow in your garden. Some of them make seed. Save the seed from the best plants. Periodically introduce new plants to increase the genetic diversity. Save the seed from the best plants. Sow the seed in your garden. Save the seed from the best plants. And on and on, year by year, and the plants that grow in your garden will be suited to your garden, your microclimate. And not only that. They will be suited to your way of gardening. If you don’t do a lot of weeding you will get plants that don’t mind a bit of competition. If you don’t water much you will get drought resistant strains. Etc, etc. It is like magic. Not like, it is magic. this is the kindest most forgiving, most accepting form of gardening I have ever found. Your plants adapt themselves TO YOU.

Now I’m off to plant some ginger. Wish me luck.