The forest garden is a design approach championed by Robert Hart in the 1970s. Hart was inspired by ‘home gardening’ – a system of multi-story cropping that is widespread throughout the tropics – that can have up to 13 layers of vegetation. Home gardening is one of the oldest land use activities, dating back 7,000 years and developed in response to the stresses of an increasing population and a decreasing resource base. Hart was amazed at the productivity and diversity of these small plots, citing the example of 3.5 million home gardens in Kerala, India that provide the majority of food for a population of 32 million in an area the size of Switzerland. He decided to adapt these principles to the temperate climate of England and labelled it as ‘forest gardening’ but edible landscaping, permaculture, agroforestry, food forestry all have the similar theme of perennial polycultures which can be applied in a diversity of climates.

In the UK, the forest garden has been further developed in Devon by Martin Crawford of the Agroforestry Research Trust. Over the past 15 years he has introduced many improved varieties of useful plants from North America and Asia where there are significant temperate zones.

As far as we know, ours is the first attempt to create an edible forest garden on a roof, and so the project was something of an experiment. The biggest question was whether our intensive planting scheme could flourish on only 30cm of substrate. The past six years have clearly demonstrated that the leap into the unknown has paid off. The garden has matured into a truly beautiful, inspirational oasis that has won awards, astonished the hundreds of people who visit every year and attracted great media interest.

Watch Robert Hart explaining principles behind forest gardening

Watch a preview of Martin Crawford's DVD, A Forest Garden Year

Take a tour around Sepp Holzer's amazing mountain farm in Austria

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