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Date Posted: 14/12/2014
 
Blog Heading: Visit to The Forest Garden, Falmouth,...Simon Miles and his Forest Garden nursery near Falmouth, Cornwall, on 22/11/2014.
 
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Visit to The Forest Garden, Falmouth,...Simon Miles and his Forest Garden nursery near Falmouth, Cornwall, on 22/11/2014.

 

One of the pfaf data-base users, who also features as a Supplier on our web-site, is Simon Miles of The Forest Garden.

His is an interesting story of how he came to passionately embrace the woodland edible growing movement, and how he is spreading the word to others.

A few years ago he set up a forest garden on a field not far from Falmouth, within a mile of the coast. En route to this venture, he has been both a local authority parks officer and a medical herbalist.

Now his aims include careful observation and research into growing conditions of the plants in this forest garden, telling as many people as he can about what he discovers, propagating and selling plants by mail order and taking what opportunities present themselves to demonstrate a different way, a woodland way, of growing food.

One of these opportunities is collaboration with a housing developer who plans to make an edible landscape a central feature of their new development, which all the house purchasers will take in as part of the deal when they buy their house.

Another is advising on mixed edible foraging hedges and Forest Gardens.

So the word is getting out from that part of Cornwall, not a million miles away from where the Ferns still continue to care for their Field near Lerryn, from which Plants for a Future originated.

I visited The Forest Garden in November, and had some tasty surprises even at that time of year. Leaves of Toona sinensis tasted a bit like Marmite, large berries on a big-berried hawthorn were still flavoursome though just starting to ferment. A beehive had been carefully placed in an auspicious spot at one side of the forest garden. The grass-cutting geese were not around that day, but are usually part of the cycle of life there.

 

Visit his web-site [www.theforestgarden.co.uk]to see how you can also be inspired by this grower and what he is doing there.

 

 

 

Wendy Stayte

pfaf Trustee.

 
 
 
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