I didn't realise you were in such a rural spot with fields all around! Amazing!
I was reading an article today about orchards, apparently the UK has lost about 80% of its traditional orchards, which are especially important wildlife habitats. (Orchards are areas of land with a minimum of five trees not grown intensively, with grass that is rarely mown or is grazed and with minimal feed/compost etc). I have been thinking about converting the garden on one side of the house to a food forest and, after reading the article today, I am even more interested in doing that. We have a talk next week at the Botanic Garden about the replanting and renovation of the Brook that runs through this area. I'm looking forward to hearing about that what I can learn for a natural/orchard garden.
When I first came to Hive, I came across lots of homesteaders who used chop and drop methods and one post was about just planting things, it seemed, wherever. Suddenly, working in my vegetable garden became much more fun and I stopped worrying so much. The first year I had some things that went wrong, and some the next year, but gradually I'm learning and last year was about right (I got crops and I ate them, not the garden creatures)! This year, I am experimenting with some new things, let's see what happens!
I hope you enjoy your garden, it looks perfect 😍
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I think we have an orchard :-D (here its called "Streuobstwiesen") because the part behind our garden i did not photograph but we can use has roughly 10 apple trees with some other trees mixed in and a meadow we never mown. But sooner or later we have to try to cut/trim some of these trees as they are growing too many branches and do not have enough light to prosper... and some of them are lying flat because of storm, but are still alive. It has a wonderful atmosphere <3
I am curious to hear what you will learn about this kind of garden/nature.
Our garden and the whole area (perhaps I should write a post about this someday) was a kitchen garden for a pit foreman roughly 100-120 years ago. The foreman's mansion is beside the garden and around it are apple trees, and old vegetable patches. The downside is the land was used for very long and we still find buried parts of various sheds.