The Forest Garden, East Sussex
Creating a wild native garden, a haven for wildlife, and a rich stratified food forest system.
Key Features:
Establishment of a seven-layer food forest, mimicking a real forest and requiring minimal maintenance.
Introduction of 4 beehives, promoting pollination and honey production.
Removal of invasive hedging plants and reforestation with 1,000 native trees.
Creation of a natural pond, attracting endangered newts and dragonflies, and used for irrigation.
Formation of a wildflower meadow, attracting butterflies and enhancing biodiversity.
Vegetables & Fruits, incorporation of low-maintenance perennial vegetables and soft fruits.
Integration of native shrubs and flowers around the house for enhanced aesthetics and pollinator support.
All of this work has amounted to harmonising the land with the wider Sussex landscape and bringing back a rich a varied biodiversity to the area. Birds of prey have been spotted, as well as hedgehogs, Monarch butterflies, adders, frogs, newts, herons, and endangered wildflowers. The land provides the family with heirloom fruits, organic vegetables as well as a landscape of colour, beauty, birdsong, connection with the land, and the knowing that they’ve successfully regenerated a natural landscape that now provides life and habitat to many other species.
This land is now managed one day a week by two people, to tweak, prune and tend as it naturally evolves each year.