Food forest gardening is a popular new form of landscaping that allows you to create your own little woodland paradise, complete with fruit, nuts and other tasty treats. Everything you plant, from trees on down to shrubs and ground covers, bears some kind of food. You can even mix in some of your favorite mushrooms, herbs or medicinal plants for extra variety.

How to Make Your Own Food Forest

Creating a food forest is a mixture of art and science. You can start by selecting the trees that will form your canopy. Anything from nut trees to fruits will work. If you want to get truly creative, you can layer your trees so that smaller trees are under or in front of the larger trees. The next layer should be medium sized edibles. Shrubs like blackberries and raspberries are perfect for this. After that, you can put in any number of smaller plants like native wildflowers, herbs, or anything else that covers the ground.

What are the Best Plants for a Food Forest?

Trees are the hardest choice to make. These are the foundation of your food forest, and there are many kinds to choose from. If you like fruits, try dwarf apples or pears, plums, peaches or even more exotic fruits like persimmons. For the underbrush layer, elderberries, blackberries, blueberries and raspberries all work well. The under-story of your food forest is where you can really get creative. You can plant all sorts of wild flavors like ginger, horse radish or Jerusalem artichokes. Plants from the cabbage family, including kale and collards,work well too. You can also try medicinal plants like echinacea or comfrey.

Oregano and thyme are must-have cooking herbs, are drought-resistant and can go straight from the garden to your kitchen. They can also be dried easily for later use. Sage is well-known to California residents, but sage used in cooking is very different from wild sage.

Great care must be taken when you use medicinal plants and mushrooms in your food forest garden. You should consult botanical experts before attempting to grow mushrooms for cooking use. Never attempt to harvest wild mushrooms without professional help. Mushrooms grow on the floor of the forest in decomposing leaves and on fallen trees. Fruit trees and herbs need sun, so your food forest garden will be made up of different areas of your yard. Landscapers and gardeners experienced in using mushrooms in a food forest garden can plant safe common and exotic edible mushrooms in the proper environment.

What are the Benefits of a Food Forest?

First and foremost, a thriving food forest will put fresh, healthy food on your dinner plate. Since most plants in a food forest are perennials, these garden plots tend to be very low maintenance. Food forests also make a wonderful shady area to escape from the cares of the world, and they provide valuable habitat to a variety of birds, amphibians and small mammals. A good food forest will add a lot of value to your life and the environment.

Looking for more food forest gardening suggestions? Call 805-773-5395