Background
His intention was to provide a healthy and therapeutic environment for himself and his brother Lacon, who was born with severe learning disabilities.
His intention was to provide a healthy and therapeutic environment for himself and his brother Lacon, who was born with severe learning disabilities.
He created a model forest garden from a 0.12 acre (500 m²) orchard on his farm. He credits the inspiration for his work to an article by James Sholto Douglas, which was in turn inspired by the work of Toyohiko Kagawa.(page 41)
Robert Hart began with a smallholding called Highwood Hill farm at in Shropshire. Hart though soon discovered that maintaining large annual vegetable beds, rearing livestock and taking care of an orchard were tasks beyond his strength.
However, he also observed that a small bed of perennial vegetables and herbs 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. Noting the maxim of Hippocrates to "make food your medicine and medicine your food", Hart adopted a vegan, 90% raw food diet.
The three main products from a forest garden are fruit, nuts and green leafy vegetables. Hart"s forest garden at was a vegan organic food production system.
He also began to examine the interactions and relationships that take place between plants in natural systems, particularly in woodland, the climax ecosystem of a cool temperate region such as the British Isles.
This led him to evolve the agroforestry 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 apples and pears 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:
Obviously, few of us are in a position to restore the forests…But tens of millions of us have gardens, or access to open spaces such as industrial wastelands, where trees can be planted…and if full advantage can be taken of the potentialities that are available even in heavily built up areas, new "city forests" can arise.