Using forest garden principles when growng vegetables in a shaded yard.

One of my nieces and her family moved into a new home with a large yard and she wants to homestead. The property has many stand-alone ornamental beds and she wants to grow a mixture of ornamentals and vegetables, however, she noticed that most of the beds have very little direct sunlight which will severely limit what she can grow.

I'm thinking that many of the forest garden principles can be used when planning the vegetable gaden or perhaps I should say when choosing the vegetables that she can grow in the shade. Am I think correctly? My garden is in full sun most of the day so I have not had to think about forest gardening because there are no trees in my garden.

We are located in northern Illinois; I have not been out to her place yet, so I don't know if she has a wooded area that can be used as a forest garden.

If I were planning a shady garden I would not worry able planting a forest garden instead I would direct my concern for shade loving vegetable.

Most cool season vegetable such as lettuce, kale, and chard.

Since fruit trees take a while to produce that would be the forest garden principle I would start with.

Here is a similar thread about forest garden principles:

https://permies.com/t/87236/Forest-Garden-Design

Here is a thread about shade tolerant vegetables:

https://permies.com/t/193646/Shade-tolerant-veggie-varieties

Such a great idea to model the property after the forest gardens, Catherine!
In Cook County and the greater Chicago area, the forest preserves are real treasures. I’ve read with interest that fine restaurants pay top dollar for morels and ramps; illegal foraging has become a problem.
On a walk through the many forest preserves while working in the area, I have seen pawpaw, serviceberry, and many other edibles. In addition to the links that Anne provided, perhaps a guided tour through the forest preserves for the whole family would reveal some new options for the shaded property.
Maybe the new shady homestead is a case of “the problem is the solution.” The family could learn to enjoy and enrich the habitat for the culinary delights that thrive in Chicago's forests and eat those delicious indigenous foods legally.

Shade is actually perfect for a leafy green garden it make the vegetables produce bigger and softer leaves to catch the max amount of sunlight. They also stay softer for longer and don't bolt and get bitter as quickly. And because you aren't trying to capture extra sunlight to make pounds and pounds of sugary fruit, you don't need that much sunlight.

Shade Tolerant Plant List
* Leafy Greens (lettuce family, spinach family, cabbage family)
* Herbs (onion family, mint/thyme family)
* raspberry/blackberry/strawberry
* goumi
* artic kiwi
* pawpaw
* juneberry (but I think they get infected with cedar pine rust too much to be worth it)
* cornellian cherry (this has actually done well for me, the plants are a tiny bit too tall for me)
* Mushroom (they love the shade and moisture, you can do oyster and winecap with minimal prep, chicken of the woods/etc if you want to be more iinvolved)
* Bee Hive (get two flow bee hive from amazon.com, they don't require any tools to harvest just spin a knob and honey flows out)
* Egg (get 6 or so egg laying chicken, and a coop, with a woodchip floor and you can throw waste food (home/supermarket/etc) to grow worms/insects for them.

All that said what exactly is a forest garden. I know that this will differ depending on who you ask. For me a food forest is actually most similar to oak savanna/prairie/silvo-pasture. With lots of spacing between plants vs a dark forest floor of a regular forest.