Last week I paid a visit to CAT, the Centre for Alternative Technology, in Wales. It’s somewhere I’ve wanted to go for a long time, but it’s a hefty trip from here so it required some planning. But this summer seemed like a good time to go as they have just opened their new WISE education centre, which has a newly planted forest garden outside.
CAT is built into a lovely wooded hillside. It’s tranquil and quiet (when it’s not heaving with visitors) and the way up is via a fascinating water powered railway, one of the steepest in the UK with a 35° slope. Water is pumped into a tank in the top carriage, which when released descends to the bottom and pulls the bottom carriage up.
The CAT forest garden was only created this year, but it has plenty of advice on offer for anyone wishing to make their own. With a forest garden, the most important thing is to do your planning, before you get stuck in.
Forest gardens are mainly planted with perennial plants, but they take time to grow and the garden will look bare (and bare soil encourages weeds) in the meantime, so why not fill up the space with some fast-growing annuals? (Click through for bigger photos, so that you can read the signs!)
Not all of the plants in a forest garden have to be edible, but they should all be useful in some way. The string plant, Phormium tenax, will come in handy if you’ve left your string back in the shed.
An established forest garden mimics a natural forest and uses nitrogen-fixing plants, together with mulches and the effects of the microbes that thrive in undisturbed soil, to fertilize the plants.
The end result is a beautiful, productive and low maintenance forest garden!
I’ve said before that forest gardens are all the rage next year. Not only have they started a one at CAT, but there’s a new one at the Eden Project too! I may not be able to get down to see that one this year, but if you do then please take photos and blog it or send them to me for inclusion in a future Forest Garden Friday! :D