Forest Garden Designs

All right, permies, I've been working on this for the past year, and I think my preliminary planting plans are finally coming together. I am located in southeast Pennsylvania, zone 7a, pretty wet climate but late summer/fall can be dry-ish, and in basically bottomland or slightly above it, with pretty flat to gently sloping pastures. I keep tweaking and revising these plans, but it is starting to feel closer to ready for some actual execution! I'm a little nervous sharing it, but I am open to any initial feedback or suggestions, if anyone happens to feel very generous and enjoys looking at permaculture/forest garden designs. Otherwise, this is mostly to mark my own progress in a public place, just for my own goals and accountability!

Some notes on the maps and current plans:
I'll mention that the "zone 1" raised vegetable beds are not shown on the attached map segments; they are on the north side of the barn within a smaller fenced barnyard, closer to the house and to more intensive irrigation options (the barn has a plumbing extension line from the house, and lots of roof for rainwater harvesting). The raised beds will also have more substantial deer and groundhog protection (work in progress!), and I plan for the beds to contain combinations of rotating annuals and beneficial/edible perennials. I'm also planning a small wildflower/insectary patch right next to the raised beds, between the barnyard and our fenced backyard. (There will be no serious gardening in the backyard because our dogs are trouble!)

The attached map sections have only the trees and larger shrubs marked (approx. mature and immature sizes) within the main two planting areas, which will be surrounded by tall deer fences. Light green is for new plantings, dark green for the existing woodland and a few solo trees in the landscape (the marked white ash is old, large, beautiful, treated for borers, and pretty likely to come down within the next ~10 years due to extensive heart rot). The soil in the more northern planting zone on the map (the central pasture) is neutral to mildly basic from past lime amendments, while the southern pasture planting zone is pretty acid (pH 5.5-6), and should be relatively easy to amend so that specific parts of it are a bit more or less acidic for the plants, where necessary. While I hope to get a lot of delicious fruits and nuts that we love to eat and use for juice and cider, I am also seriously prioritizing disease resistance for our local disease pressures as much as possible. (My spouse and I both have demanding full-time jobs, and I want this to be pretty self-maintaining once it's reasonably established!) I'm also planning a rhizome barrier and pergola within the fenced southern planting zone. More detailed guilds/superguilds and foot path plans are now taking shape, but are still mostly lists and general sketches, not shown on these maps.

Other plans: I expect it to take a good 1-2 years to recondition the soil through mulching and cover cropping for these zones, but I might be able to start a round of tree planting sooner, and then mulch around them, just to give the trees a head start. I am prepared to do pest checks, maintenance, composting/mulching, and healthy organic sprays like surround or spot treatments where needed, but my long-term goal is to minimize this work for my own sanity! For irrigation, I'm currently thinking of installing some shallow fishtail swales with small gentle planting mounds downhill for at least some of these zones; the slopes are very gentle, but I think it will still help to reduce irrigation in dry spells. I also plan to add some large rainwater containers to the barn for the central bed and to a roof over some wood chip piles at the southwest corner, only to supplement rainwater in drier years. Note that we do not have farm animals and mostly are not allowed to in our township and zone (and our dogs and barn cats would be extremely delighted to eat small animals that might be allowed, like rabbits, chickens, and quail), so this is basically a plants + wildlife plan.

I've started sketching out some other zones on the maps, but they are more preliminary (two shellnut hickories along the existing woodland edge, where things get a bit swampier, a windbreak hedge on the western border, and areas where we might turn pasture grass over to wildflower/nectary/insectary zones and sitting areas). Those will probably wait another year or two to be mulched and then installed.

Thanks for reading this personal progress report!!

This is really well thought out, especially the layering. Interested to see how the hazels do in that bottomland setting. I planted a few in similar conditions and they handled the moisture better than expected but took a couple years to really get going. The only thing I'd watch is the spacing between your fruit trees and the nitrogen fixers, mine ended up competing for light more than I planned for once everything hit year three.

I'm too far away from your climate to be really useful, but wish you well! I'm taking it that North is at the top.

Some thoughts:

If things get too congested and shady you can coppice hazel and it will regrow (in my climate) in a couple of years. It's a good way of getting straight poles for craft and plant supports.

I thought pawpaw needed it shady? Is that as seedlings only or as mature trees?

Exciting that camellia will grow well for you. I'm trying some tea camellia outside on raised beds. I'm hoping that will keep them dry enough that they will survive well for me - wind blowing off the leaves (and rocking the plants) over winter tends to be my issue with evergreens.

Had you thought about planting in 'sunscoop' designs to shelter more tender plants and create a bit of a microclimate?

Having something that will crop well in the sun in the early years as the trees get established is a good plan - like strawberries - that spread and form a ground cover but might get shaded out as succession occurs.

Is your sketch North to South?

Joao Winckler wrote:This is really well thought out, especially the layering. Interested to see how the hazels do in that bottomland setting. I planted a few in similar conditions and they handled the moisture better than expected but took a couple years to really get going. The only thing I'd watch is the spacing between your fruit trees and the nitrogen fixers, mine ended up competing for light more than I planned for once everything hit year three.

Oh thanks for that tip! I was actually worried about the shrub nitrogen fixers being too far away to be as effective as desired, and I've read some really conflicting suggestions about that distance (heck, Gaia's Garden would have me put them RIGHT up against the trees, but I didn't want to do that). The goumi will be large, though those aren't huge varieties, but the false indigo and New Jersey tea should stay smaller and I think they're pretty slow growing. I'll spread them back a bit but maybe not too far?

Anne Miller wrote:Is your sketch North to South?

Yes, sorry! These are segments of a larger map of the property that I screenshotted to share here, so the scale and compass got cut off. The background is a local Google satellite image and I kept it oriented north towards the top. The tallest trees are on the north sides of each plot.

Nancy Reading wrote:I'm too far away from your climate to be really useful, but wish you well! I'm taking it that North is at the top.

Some thoughts:

If things get too congested and shady you can coppice hazel and it will regrow (in my climate) in a couple of years. It's a good way of getting straight poles for craft and plant supports.

I thought pawpaw needed it shady? Is that as seedlings only or as mature trees?

Exciting that camellia will grow well for you. I'm trying some tea camellia outside on raised beds. I'm hoping that will keep them dry enough that they will survive well for me - wind blowing off the leaves (and rocking the plants) over winter tends to be my issue with evergreens.

Had you thought about planting in 'sunscoop' designs to shelter more tender plants and create a bit of a microclimate?

Having something that will crop well in the sun in the early years as the trees get established is a good plan - like strawberries - that spread and form a ground cover but might get shaded out as succession occurs.

The coppicing is a good point, if they don't take off but do survive, or if they start to die back sooner than hoped. I would love some nuts for a while, though! I love hazelnuts, if the squirrels will share any. The Beast is primarily for pollinating all the others, so I do want it to flower; that's why it is west of everything else (we're in the prevailing westerlies). (Slate can also pollinate Raritan. The others don't pollinate each other.)

Pawpaws do best with some shade as sapling (first 1-2 years, really), but then it thrives in sun to part shade. That's why I switched the nitrogen fixers for the pawpaws to the faster growing goumi shrubs, actually, to help shade them when they are young; I'm also prepared to add some shade for the first couple years, like by growing beans over them. The southern corner of that upper plot is also close enough to the white ash to get a little shade during the day, unlike the rest of the plot, which should mostly be in full sun by mid-morning.

And ha! The camellias are my biggest experiment, and I'm honestly prepared for them to fail! Ornamentals can do okay here, but we're right on the edge of the tolerance range for the proper tea plants. I'd just like to try. The rest of these plants should all be pretty hardy in our zone, at least if I can get them established, so the camellia is the only real experiment. It would be fun if they work out! I'm going to give them some gentle planting mounds so they have extra happy drainage.

And yes! My guilds are only sketched out for now, but lots of strawberries and edible bulbs and such. I'm looking forward to experimenting with strawberry varieties.

Oh, and the hazels will definitely get some gentle mounds. These are also all Rutgers varieties, where they thrive, and we're not far from Rutgers, same general climate. Hopefully they'll make it!