We are in Thailand have now an 6 hectares 8 year old tropical dry forest from what once was a ricefield. We have a mix of allowing nature to plant itself ie rewilding and introducing trees a lot of fruit trees, shrubs and plants the layered food forest dream.
After our 8 years of experience of planting and caring for our food forest and trees I would do things sligthly different and I do.
Now I plan more spacing between main fruit trees. Work more in alleycrop type systems. Dedicate rows to support trees, shrub and herb species that are mainly there to give mulch. A bit more linear and plant a few things at a time not to much diversity. Good to add as there is an opening to do so. Also now as I understand the seasons and land better if we open a new piece of land tend to create swale type trenches or donuts around trees to harvest water. I always set up irrigation now if i plant production trees. As we have extended dry season.
I do think it being dense is not necessarily bad. One observation is that now we have a lot of leaf litter ie mulch or compost carbon material.
That being said we are at a point that our food forest is pretty dense and is affecting negatively production in places. It does effect the other layers if there is too much shade.
One way we deal with it is that by planting coffee and cacoa, ferns, pepper vines etc as layered shade tolerant/living species.
The other solution is heavy pruning which we intent do before next rainy season. Besides our chop and drop regularly. Now we are at a stage where we actually have to cut down trees that are pretty big. We will coppice them so that we can keep harvesting biomass from them. This will open up space for our prioritised elements, feed more biomass to the soil etc. Also to create pockets of lights. Open spaces in your forest are good in my feeling then it is about planting some desired groundcovers.
Tend to use chainsaw more and more. Have shredder/chipper and now also invested in hedge cutter. This all to speed up the processing.
One important thing to take into account when designing is your time and management/maintenance of it all. Also good to draw it out clearly and talk to people with experience in your area if you can find them.
