Starting a small forest from lawn this summer

I've got a few hundred square feet that I want to turn into a small forest. My thoughts are to create food, shade, habitat for birds, and host plants for native butterflies and moths.

I've already paid for the plants. They're going to be shipped to me in the next couple of weeks.

I've been reading and watching whatever I can find on forest building. But I have to admit, it seems like a gigantic puzzle. It's so hard to visualize how things will look in 5 or 10 years when the trees and bushes are getting more mature. I also want a path(s) through the area. Also, I'm starting with some pretty hard, dry, compacted lawn in that area. It's been a hot and dry spring for us.

So far, my thoughts go like this: use rope to lay out a general shape for the forest. Till the ground. Hand pick out all the grass (some of the grass is pretty weedy and spreads by runners and is hard to get rid of, so I think I should get most of it up front). Pick out the rocks (it's very rocky ground here).

Now this part I'm not sure of. Should I dig down fairly deeply and put in some logs and branches for a hugel base for my forest?

Then I'd add layers of whatever I've got. I do have quite a few bags of leaves still. I could probably get my hands on various compost materials, like maybe coffee grounds, veggie trimmings, and so on. I could also add some compost.

I plan to top that with the soil that came from digging, and then more leaves and wood mulch. Then I'll plant my plants in compost holes.

I guess I'll lay out the paths with skinny logs and mulch inside.

I wish I wasn't doing this in summer, but there was a big covid delay ordering from this company and I really want to get this forest started this year, so it will be that much further along next year. I'm considering putting some row cover or something to reduce the sun on these tiny seedlings.

Here's a list of some of the things I've bought to get going. Some will be on the forest edge.
Main trees: one Bur Oak, three paper birch, a shagbark hickory, two eastern red cedar, a pincherry, a witch hazel
Bushes/shrubs: New Jersey Tea, highbush cranberry, black chokeberry, two elderberry

There are more things I'd like to add as I go along, but I figured I'd try to make the main structure first.

I'm also considering planting a bunch of nurse trees. I'm thinking alder.

For now, in between these plantings I was thinking of having some cover crop. Some kind of long rooted radish was one thought (to add biomass under the soil line. I'd leave the roots and chop & drop the leafy parts when they're ready. Maybe some nitrogen fixing cover crop as well (vetch?) The area will get a reasonable amount of sun while these trees are still babies.

Am I missing nitrogen fixing trees?

I'm excited about this, but it is hard to know exactly how to go about this... and how to space these small plants so they'll be in a good place years down the road. At the same time, I know they'll grow better if they are close enough to provide some shelter for each other. I guess this is where nurse trees may come in.

Does anyone have any thoughts about my plan? Please let me know if there are things I haven't thought of that I should!

Hi Heidi—sounds like an exciting project! I'm similarly converting a lawn into a (food) forest, though by necessity I am doing it just a few trees at a time, over years. I'm on my second summer now so I'm no expert but have dealt with some of these same questions.

I sympathize with the puzzle part. I have found mine is easier to visualize with time as I got a few things in. And of course I have placed some things poorly and made some mistakes. It happens.

As far as spacing goes, the nursery ought to provide guidelines or you can just google how much room those trees need. You can compress those a little bit if you plan to keep the trees in control well with pruning, but keep in mind that a crowded forest isn't a healthy one, typically. For a path, I would aim to provide at least a three-foot width or you'll feel crowded by anything that may grow up close to it.

Generally it's not actually recommended to amend the soil too much for tree planting, and if you tried the large-scale hugel thing I'd be worried about unintended consequences. Most good nurseries will tell you to plant your trees in unamended soil, then mound whatever compost and mulch you're going to add above the grade. I have followed that advice and the apples, pears, elderberries, persimmons, and aronia I planted are doing great despite my challenging soil, which is turfgrass over clay and rock.

On the other hand, cover cropping all around the trees sounds like a great idea. Depends on your soil and climate what will be best; you might consider red or crimson clover as one possibility. If you don't have nitrogen-fixing trees (and I don't have any in my system yet either), you should also be able to provide some of that benefit with nitrogen-fixing cover crops.

I agree completely with the advice not to amend the soil you plant trees into. Unless you amend the entire area you are talking about, you will create little fertile pockets. When the tree roots hit the edges of those pockets, they will stop going out and will circle in the holes. That will stunt them at best. I always plant trees in native soil, and them add mulch and any amendments to the to of the soil afterwards.

As far as planting trees on hugel type ground, when the wood rots down, your trees will settle, probably into wonky positions. I wouldn't do it. Trees need a firm footing.  If you want hugel beds, I would build them around or between your trees.

I've found some videos to be especially helpful to me as I make a couple of small food forests at my dad's place in the city.

This one by Geoff Lawton shows the process simplified:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WDY5JuJln4

I think it's easy to be overwhelmed by the idea of "doing it right," so these recent videos by David the Good have encouraged me to not get bogged down in details:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6AeMVgxUVo&t=3367s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tDKgBzmvps&t=3660s

Hi Heidi- I am in much the same place as you. I don’t have great experienced advice, but thought I’d share my approach. I am planting my trees across the middle of my front lawn in a 8’ x 60’ arc shape. It is serving to help make a smaller lawn area (between that and the house will be the only grass I keep). Trees are in a bit of a zig zag so half would be accessed from one side of the berm and half from the other side. So I’ve made an island with paths on either side. I don’t have access to the tools (or the physical strength) to remove the grass, so I dug holes in the lawn for the trees. I then surrounded them with cardboard and covered with grass clippings. Hopefully by next year the grass around them will be dead and I can plant more easily in the new bed. For now when I plant an understory plant I push back the grass clippings, and cut a hole in the cardboard/sod and plant in there. So far so good, and a lot of labor saved. My grass roots are about 4” deep, so if I removed the grass I’d lose 4” of topsoil and lots of organic matter.

I also didn't remove the grass except immediately around the tree holes.  Everything is covered with mulch - wood chips, leaves, prunings, grass clippings, and chopped and dropped support plants.

Thank you so much for your great advice! I already feel a bit more settled about how to go about this.

Matt and Trace, I see your points about amending the soil before hand. I guess I won't do that. :) I think the idea came from Shubhendu Sharma who gives a TED talk about afforestation and the method he uses. Apparently he amends the soil to a depth of one metre before planting native saplings densely (3 to 5 for every square metre). There are benefits to this, as it creates a lush mini canopy very quickly, and that keeps the ground shaded and moisture conserved. I'm tempted to still try some tight spacing with nurse trees or trees I will cut down in a few years as the main trees take off. I like the idea of red/crimson clover as one of the cover crops.

Tyler, thank you for the video links. I do think they helped. I especially like in the first one how he shows that how he cares for his forest changes over the first number of years. That makes a lot of sense. I'll let the first year be heavy with the annuals (cover crops), and just adjust each year.

S Greyzoll, love your island idea, with the access paths on the outside instead of the inside. And since you and Tyler both suggest cardboard/heavy mulching on the grass, I think I'm going to do that. I was all ready this week to set up the borrowing of a tiller, but I think I'm going to scrap that. And it's a good point that digging out grass would mean a loss of organic matter and topsoil. I mean, I always have a use for that stuff elsewhere on the property, but better in this case not to dig.

Thanks again... my plan is starting to come together!

I feel your pain regarding the puzzle part. I got super analytical last year when I started a similar project. First I made a cheat sheet: each plant with their spacing requirements. Then I measured my total area and went to a graph/grid paper generator website, which lets you specify how many square you want which you can match to how many feet your garden is. That way you can sit down with a pencil and your cheat sheet and map out how all these things will fit when mature. I actually got tired of drawing and re-drawing so I cut out little post-it notes the size of my trees and shrubs so I could stick them to my graph paper and move them around easier!

If your county has a GIS website (google "your county name" + GIS) those usually let you measure and draw right on top of satellite imagery of your yard. Measurements are pretty accurate too!

Matt Todd wrote:I feel your pain regarding the puzzle part. I got super analytical last year when I started a similar project. First I made a cheat sheet: each plant with their spacing requirements. Then I measured my total area and went to a graph/grid paper generator website, which lets you specify how many square you want which you can match to how many feet your garden is. That way you can sit down with a pencil and your cheat sheet and map out how all these things will fit when mature. I actually got tired of drawing and re-drawing so I cut out little post-it notes the size of my trees and shrubs so I could stick them to my graph paper and move them around easier!

If your county has a GIS website (google "your county name" + GIS) those usually let you measure and draw right on top of satellite imagery of your yard. Measurements are pretty accurate too!

Ok, there's a whole lot of brilliance right there. Thank you!

Now if only our drought would end so I can plant in good faith. :)

Heidi Schmidt wrote:

Matt Todd wrote:I feel your pain regarding the puzzle part. I got super analytical last year when I started a similar project. First I made a cheat sheet: each plant with their spacing requirements. Then I measured my total area and went to a graph/grid paper generator website, which lets you specify how many square you want which you can match to how many feet your garden is. That way you can sit down with a pencil and your cheat sheet and map out how all these things will fit when mature. I actually got tired of drawing and re-drawing so I cut out little post-it notes the size of my trees and shrubs so I could stick them to my graph paper and move them around easier!

If your county has a GIS website (google "your county name" + GIS) those usually let you measure and draw right on top of satellite imagery of your yard. Measurements are pretty accurate too!

Ok, there's a whole lot of brilliance right there. Thank you!

Now if only our drought would end so I can plant in good faith. :)

Similarly, I use a screenshot of our property from google earth and draw all over it in a Paint program  on my computer. It’s great for moving things around to see how it might look.

Thank you... also a great idea!