Tuesday 28th July from 7pm to 9pm
at the Herb Garden Café, Llandrindod
With guest speaker Roz Brown
Update: Permaculture and Forest Garden Information sheets are now available.
Fifteen years ago Martin Crawford moved from conventional organic gardening to creating a forest garden from a bare field. Today Martin Crawford's garden is a fantastic example of what can be achieved with a minimum effort input to produce abundant crops of edible trees, plants, shrubs and ground cover. In this film he takes us through the seasons of his garden and shows the huge range of plants that can be grown.
The film will be introduced by Roz Brown who will also be talking after the film about the close links between Permaculture and Transition.
We've watched this film over again when we want something gentle and inspiring ... and every time we've come away having focused on something that escaped us before.
Amazon reviewer
Admission to the meeting is free. A donation will be requested to contribute to the costs of refreshments.
A poster to help promote this event is available. Please download and display.
Guest speaker: Roz Brown
Roz has grown food organically and foraged for wild food for over 40 years. She has a background in journalism and holistic medicine, and came to Permaculture in a big way in 2009 because she needed a radically different approach to grow food successfully on an upland site in the Cambrians.
Now living on the 'edge' in Kington, Roz is actively working on local food resilience through the Three Towns Food Network (Knighton, Presteigne and Kington). TTFN works in close collaboration with many local enviro groups, including Transition Presteigne, Tene Valley Environmental Group (TVEG), Knucklass Community Land Trust, Kington KLEEN, and Knighton Tree Allotments Trust (KTAT).
She has recently started a community 'hub' stall in the weekly Kington market to sell fresh garden surplus and locally made crafts. This is designed to make affordable healthy food available, give a modest return to home growers, encourage entrepreneurship by mentoring, and increase vibrancy and footfall in the market.
Roz is an ardent believer in Sociocracy (Permaculture of organisations) as the way forward for dynamic governance and effective consent decision-making in community groups and projects. She is using this approach to support Permaculture Wales (Paramaethu Cymru) towards a sustainable future which includes the establishment of a LAND Project for Wales to showcase Permaculture and extend learning opportunities and influence.
Extract from a review of A Forest Garden Year by The Ecologist
The thing about permaculture forest gardens is that to a conventional gardener they look like a total mess: no lawns; no raised beds; no crop rotations; very few annual crops; and absolutely no neat drills of seedlings.
To the untrained eye, it seems as though someone has simply mown a pathway through a scrubby woodland.
A guide in a forest garden is an absolute must, and this is the beauty of A Forest Garden Year.
In this 50 minute film, forest garden expert Martin Crawford leads you on a tour of his remarkable plot, transformed from a plain field into a cornucopia of edible and functional plants. Built on the principle that a young forest ecosystem is in fact one of the most productive ecological environments on Earth, Crawford’s garden works with natural processes to produce an abundance of food with a minimum of effort.
Extract from a review of A Forest Garden Year by Greenshop
Fifteen years ago Martin Crawford moved from conventional organic gardening to creating a forest garden from a bare field. His inspiration at that time was reading books by Robert Hart and also visiting his garden in Shropshire. This garden was wonderful! Today Martin Crawford's garden is a fantastic example of what can be achieved with a minimum effort input to produce abundant crops of edible trees, plants, shrubs and ground cover.
This film takes us through the seasons of his garden and shows and suggests the huge range of plants that can be grown, from the canopy to the ground. The Forest Garden Year also shows how to graft an apple tree to crop a variety of apples onto the same rootstock, how to prepare to grow shiitake mushrooms, instructions on pollarding and pruning, protect crops, attract beneficial insects and increase valuable minerals in the soil.
Not everyone has a garden the size of the presenter but the masses of ideas can be tailored to fit any size of garden, and all the while creating a haven for yourself and wildlife. Even if the idea of a whole forest garden does not appeal there are some very interesting ideas, plus anyone who has an interest in any type of gardening will certainly enjoy this film.
