Robert Hart (forest gardener)
Encyclopedia
Forest gardening
Forest gardening is a food production and agroforestry system based on woodland ecosystems, incorporating fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, vines and perennial vegetables which have yields directly useful to humans...
in temperate zones. He created a model forest garden from a 0.12 acre (500 m²) orchard on his farm.
Highwood Hill farm
Robert Hart began with a smallholdingSmallholding
A smallholding is a farm of small size.In third world countries, smallholdings are usually farms supporting a single family with a mixture of cash crops and subsistence farming. As a country becomes more affluent and farming practices become more efficient, smallholdings may persist as a legacy of...
called Highwood Hill farm at Wenlock Edge
Wenlock Edge
Wenlock Edge is a limestone escarpment near Much Wenlock, Shropshire, England. It is long and runs from South West to North East between Craven Arms and Much Wenlock. It is roughly 330 metres high...
in Shropshire
Shropshire
Shropshire is a county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. It borders Wales to the west...
. His intention was to provide a healthy and therapeutic environment for himself and his brother Lacon, who was born with severe learning disabilities.
Hart though soon discovered that maintaining large annual
Annual plant
An annual plant is a plant that usually germinates, flowers, and dies in a year or season. True annuals will only live longer than a year if they are prevented from setting seed...
vegetable
Vegetable
The noun vegetable usually means an edible plant or part of a plant other than a sweet fruit or seed. This typically means the leaf, stem, or root of a plant....
beds, rearing livestock
Livestock
Livestock refers to one or more domesticated animals raised in an agricultural setting to produce commodities such as food, fiber and labor. The term "livestock" as used in this article does not include poultry or farmed fish; however the inclusion of these, especially poultry, within the meaning...
and taking care of an orchard
Orchard
An orchard is an intentional planting of trees or shrubs that is maintained for food production. Orchards comprise fruit or nut-producing trees which are grown for commercial production. Orchards are also sometimes a feature of large gardens, where they serve an aesthetic as well as a productive...
were tasks beyond his strength. However, he also observed that a small bed of perennial vegetable
Perennial vegetable
Perennial vegetables are parts of plants that are prepared and eaten like a vegetable, and that are also perennial, in other words, the plants live for more than two years....
s and herb
Herb
Except in botanical usage, an herb is "any plant with leaves, seeds, or flowers used for flavoring, food, medicine, or perfume" or "a part of such a plant as used in cooking"...
s he had planted was looking after itself with little or no intervention. Furthermore, these plants provided interesting and unusual additions to the diet, and seemed to promote health and vigour in both body and mind.
Forest garden project
Noting the maxim of HippocratesHippocrates
Hippocrates of Cos or Hippokrates of Kos was an ancient Greek physician of the Age of Pericles , and is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine...
to “make food your medicine and medicine your food”, Robert adopted a vegan
Veganism
Veganism is the practice of eliminating the use of animal products. Ethical vegans reject the commodity status of animals and the use of animal products for any purpose, while dietary vegans or strict vegetarians eliminate them from their diet only...
, 90% raw food diet
Raw veganism
Raw veganism is a diet that combines veganism and raw foodism. It excludes all food of animal origin, and all food cooked above 48 degrees Celsius . A raw vegan diet includes raw vegetables and fruits, nuts and nut pastes, grain and legume sprouts, seeds, plant oils, sea vegetables, herbs, and...
. The three main products from a forest garden are fruit, nuts and green leafy vegetables
Leaf vegetable
Leaf vegetables, also called potherbs, green vegetables, greens, leafy greens or salad greens, are plant leaves eaten as a vegetable, sometimes accompanied by tender petioles and shoots...
.
He also began to examine the interactions and relationships that take place between plants in natural systems, particularly in woodland
Woodland
Ecologically, a woodland is a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade. Woodlands may support an understory of shrubs and herbaceous plants including grasses. Woodland may form a transition to shrubland under drier conditions or during early stages of...
, the climax ecosystem
Ecosystem
An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....
of a cool temperate region such as the British Isles
British Isles
The British Isles are a group of islands off the northwest coast of continental Europe that include the islands of Great Britain and Ireland and over six thousand smaller isles. There are two sovereign states located on the islands: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and...
. This led him to evolve the concept of the ‘Forest Garden’: Based on the observation that the natural forest can be divided into distinct layers or ‘storeys’, he developed an existing small orchard of apple
Apple
The apple is the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree, species Malus domestica in the rose family . It is one of the most widely cultivated tree fruits, and the most widely known of the many members of genus Malus that are used by humans. Apple grow on small, deciduous trees that blossom in the spring...
s and pear
Pear
The pear is any of several tree species of genus Pyrus and also the name of the pomaceous fruit of these trees. Several species of pear are valued by humans for their edible fruit, but the fruit of other species is small, hard, and astringent....
s into an edible landscape consisting of seven dimensions;
- A ‘canopy’ layer consisting of the original mature fruit trees.
- A ‘low-tree’ layer of smaller nut and fruit trees on dwarfing root stocks.
- A ‘shrub layer’ of fruit bushes such as currants and berries.
- A ‘herbaceous layer’ of perennial vegetables and herbs.
- A ‘ground cover’ layer of edible plants that spread horizontally.
- A ‘rhizosphere’ or ‘underground’ dimension of plants grown for their roots and tubers.
- A vertical ‘layer’ of vines and climbers.
Hart had a vision for the spread of the forest garden throughout even the most heavily built up areas, as he explains:
Works by Robert Hart
- Inviolable Hills: Ecology, Conservation and Regeneration of the British Uplands, Stuart & W (1968). ISBN 0722401019.
- Forest Farming: Towards a Solution to Problems of World Hunger and Conservation, co-authored with James Sholto Douglas, Rodale Press (1976). ISBN 0722401426.
- Ecosociety: A historical study of ecological man, Natraj (1984). ISBN B0006EHVPW.
- The Forest Garden, Institute for Social Inventions (1987). ISBN 0948826029.
- Forest Gardening: Rediscovering Nature and Community in a Post-Industrial Age, Green Books (UK) (1991, 1996 revised). ISBN 1-900322-02-1.
- Can Life Survive?, essay published in Deep Ecology and Anarchism by Freedom Press (1993). ISBN 0-900384-67-0.
- Beyond the Forest Garden, Gaia Books, London (1996). ISBN 1-85675-037-X.
External links
- A web tribute to Robert Hart
- The Garden of Love an article on Robert Hart's garden by Ken Fern of Plants for a FuturePlants for a FuturePlants For A Future is an online not for profit resource for those interested in edible and useful plants of temperate regions. The project currently has a site in the South West of England where many of the plants are being grown on a trial basis, and maintains a small mail order catalogue...
. - Obituary and A forest garden legacy, The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, April 2000 - Obituary in permaculture magazine