In October 2019, I began work reclaiming a moderately steep portion of my property from the invasive Himalayan blackberries and thistles with the plan of transforming it into a forest garden. I'll be documenting the progress here for my own records, and hopefully others will enjoy seeing what I'm working on. It's always fun to get ideas, so please share what you're doing in your garden in the comments section below! This garden is on Kitsap Peninsula in Washington, zone 8b.
THE BEFORE
About 1/4 acre of our property is covered in blackberries. I've read that Himalayan blackberries can grow up to 40 feet long, and I believe it! We have a path through our woods that has blackberries on either side of it. In the summer, we can have the path completely cleared only to have it be impassable a few days later because the blackberries grow so quickly. In addition to the blackberries and thistle, I also had to remove a small fenced garden that was so overgrown the fence wire had grown into the trees! Plus, the willow and wisteria trees planted there were way too close to our septic drain field, so out they came. Here are some before photos as well as some of the removal progress.
This is the path I mentioned. The blackberries reach about 10 feet high before flopping over. They are tasty but VERY aggressive and harmful to our native plants.
The overgrown garden that had to be removed. As you can imagine, there is a need for deer fencing. Don't worry, there is still plenty outside the new fence to keep the deer happy.
Old garden removal in process...
It's hard to believe there were raised beds in there. This was primarily a rose garden that the previous owners installed. After removing the fencing and overgrown trees, I was able to drastically prune the roses so they can be kept in their current location or transported elsewhere. While this portion has been cleaned up, it is currently covered in black plastic (with holes cut for the roses) until I have time to dig out the blackberry roots. A project for later this year...
This is the section just north of the old rose garden. You can see that at one point the previous owners had a raised bed in that lower section, just in front of the blackberries. It was completely covered so I didn't realize the bed was even there until I started clearing the brush.
LET THE WORK BEGIN
After cleaning up the old rose garden, I defined a space I felt would be manageable to reclaim for the forest garden. Our property has a moderate slope around the house (as show in the photo above), but a very steep slope just after the old rose garden. The steep slope will require more time than I have right now, and it will require finesse to maintain soil stability; so I'm containing my current work to everything above the slope and up to the driveway. I'll be reclaiming some lawn as forest garden space but will keep the area over the septic drain field outside the garden fence and maintained with grass, clover, heal-all, ajuga and whatever else is growing there currently. I don't water the grass in the summer nor mow too often, so it is a hotspot for bees!
Once the new garden area was defined, I was ready to tackle the dreaded blackberries. I started by trimming the canes down to about 12 inches from the ground. Then I came back through with a pickaxe and dug up the roots. Next I topped with heavy cardboard (tape removed) and 6 to 10 inches of mulch - top dressing mulch in the areas for plantings and hog fuel mulch for the pathways. Rather than trim the canes over the entire area and then come back and dig up roots throughout the whole space, I worked in sections. Otherwise, the weeds would have started to reclaim the area before I could get the mulch down. I've heard that it's best to remove blackberry roots when the plants are flowering since this is when the plant is pushing all its energy out of the roots (to feed the flowers and make fruit). However, given the size of the project, I worked on removing the blackberries whenever I could.
Here you can see the blackberries cut about 12 inches from the ground and a bunch of thistle. I had already pulled the roots in the upper left section. This section later became the hugelkultur bed (details below).
The amount of garbage I found buried in the soil could fill multiple trucks!
It looks rough, but you can see freshly cleared areas here, along with a variety of trees and shrubs already planted. You can see the cut blackberries I still need to dig up on the right side of the above photo.
During the clearing process, I also worked to regrade certain areas, allowing for a small amount of flat area around trees and to accommodate raised beds for plants that need deeper/looser soil. The beds were made from trees that fell during recent storms. The logs will break down over time, adding nutrients into the soil. Though they'll eventually need to be replaced, I love that they're a healthy and free option!
I created three different types of raised bed, depending on the location and planned use. 1) Some logs are used for erosion control on the slope, typically next to a path that I leveled for easier walking. This seemed like a perfect opportunity to use the log as one side of a raised bed, while the clay will essentially act as another "side" of the raised bed. For these beds, I dug out a section of clay soil next to the log and replaced it with topsoil. As an example, the bed I built for my root veggies (photo directly below, right bed) has a final depth of 12+ inches with a width of about 8 inches. The grasses transplanted above the bed help keep the mulch from the planting area above from running into it during the rainy season. 2) For the bed on the left in the photo below, which will eventually house asparagus and strawberries, I placed logs on top of the native soil and dug out the clay so that the topsoil will be about 14 inches deep. 3) For others, I simply placed logs on top of the native soil and filled the box with topsoil. An example of this is the second photo below, which currently houses garlic, strawberries and borage. I currently have six raised beds in the garden. All the fruit trees, shrubs, herbs, etc. are planted in native soil with minor amendments.
In an ideal permaculture world, I would have strategically started with plants that would improve the soil and later added edible plants. But I was WAY too eager for that! As soon as I had a space cleared, I filled it with fruit trees and shrubs as well as herbs and flowers. Except...remember the deer? Yeah. They were VERY excited for the new buffet I'd just planted for them. So I grabbed tons of t-posts from the hardware store as well as anything I could find that could be used as fencing.
We eventually fenced the entire garden, using two different styles of fencing: a more substantial wooden surround sandwiched with 2x2 inch metal fencing for the two sides that abut the house, and metal posts with 2x2 inch poly fencing for the other two sides, which abut our neighbor’s field on one side and our “wild” area on the other. You can read more details about the fencing we chose and my thoughts on it in my post To Fence or not to Fence.
It might not be pretty, but the temporary fencing protected the trees from the deer until we were able to build a fence.
One section of the yard had a very odd slope - essentially where a few different slopes came together. For this section I decided to try building a hugelkultur bed. I filled the space with logs and sticks of varying degrees of decay as well as grass clippings, cardboard, shredded newspaper, old potting soil, dried leaves... I honestly can't remember everything I put in it. Then I finished it off with topsoil and top dressing mulch. I later added a hog fuel mulch pathway and planted blueberries. Over the last year, the hugel sunk about 6 inches, so I topped with more mulch. I do believe there are rodents, namely mice, living in the hugel, which might prove to be problematic (someone was eating my bean starts last year!); so we'll see how this area progresses over time. Interestingly, there are tons of snakes living under the black plastic just next to the hugel (in the old rose garden), so I'm really not sure why the mice are still around! UPDATE: Learn about my thoughts on the hugelkultur bed in my Years Two & Three update post.
The hugel is in the top left of the photo below, next to a dry creek (in process) that is fed by a pipe coming from the gutters on our house.
I built stairs on either side of the hugel (upper left in this photo) and am currently working on installing stairs in one other section that is a bit too steep for a sloped pathway. I followed the diy network tutorial for building timber steps but did not use weed blocker (that stuff is of the devil and should be used by no one!) and I used medium river rock I already had onsite as the filler with small pea gravel (also left behind by the previous owners) for the top portion.
Here are the stairs in process.
You can see the finished stairs, in part, on either side of the hugel in the above photo.
I'm still waiting for the fruit trees and shrubs to mature, but I certainly did enjoy a bountiful harvest this past year, including those invasive (but yummy) blackberries, tons of herbs, flowers for tea and salves, onions for storage and nasturtium for salads! I can't wait to see what this next year brings!
UPDATE: Want to see the progress I've made? Check out my update post Permaculture Forest Garden: Years Two & Three.
PLANT LIST (to date)
Trees: Apple (Pristine, Cosmic Crisp); Cherry (Sam, Bing); Pear- combo (Anjou, Chojuro Asian, Nijisseiki Asian, Kosik Asian, Shinseki Asian); Plum – combo (Seneca, Italian Prune, Stanley, Yellow Egg); Mulberry (Pakistan, dwarf black/details unknown); Filbert (Theta, Yamhill, Jefferson); Persimmon (American Prairie Sun); Fig (Olympian); Sweet Bay Leaf (Laurus nobilis)
Shrubs/Canes: Blueberry (Bountiful Blue Dwarf, Sunshine, Elliot, Blue Crop, Earliblue, Legacy); Honeyberry (Blue Moon); Raspberry (Meeker, Munger Black, Willamette and a gold variety – will have to look at tag to remember); Red Flowering Currant, Mock Orange and Western Serviceberry
Perennials/Herbs/Self-Seed Flowers: Lavender, Sage (a few varieties), Lovage, Thyme (a few varieties), Rosemary (blue trailing type), Calendula (Alpha), Yarrow (white), Chives (Purly), Borage, Roman Chamomile, Lemon verbena, Nodding Onion, Anise hyssop, Echinacea Purpurea, Strawberries (alpine/coastal, Raspyberry, Cherry Berry), Rhubarb, Nasturtium (jewel mix), Blue-eye Grass, Windflower, Sunchoke, Crocosmia, Daylilies
Wild Garden: I have an area outside the fence that I allow to go wild. This is a great spot for pollinators and for the deer to much. Feverfew; Oregano: Mint (several varieties); Bee Balm; Black Eyed Susan; Lupine; Crocosmia; Phlox and probably a number of others I can't remember! In the fall I put down a lot of wild flower seeds here as well, so hopefully the birds didn't eat them all and they'll start coming up this year.
Volunteer Plants (that I like and keep or move to a better location): thimbleberry, ajuga, heal-all, fireweed, yellow dock, forget-me-not, swordfern, Chamisso Sedge
New for this upcoming year: Asparagus (Purple Passion); Strawberry (Shuksan); Early Fuju Persimmon; Lingonberries (many varieties); Aronia (Low Scape Mound); Tea Camelias; at least one more Honeyberry (different variety); possibly some hardy or fuzzy kiwi; Goumi Berry (Sweet Scarlet, Red Gem, Tillamook); Goji (Lifeberry) and hopefully a couple of Cornelian Cherry Dogwood (Coral Blaze, Sunrise). I have purchased a Lyndon Blue Grape but need to get the arbor built before planting next month. Plus tons of herbs/flowers - more varieties of hyssop, echinacea, nasturtium and calendula; Common Camas; Western Columbine; Sweet Cicely; Strawberry spinach; Valerian; Anise; Marsh Mallow; Lemon Bee Balm; Garden Sorrel; Garlic Chives; Clary Sage; Common Plantain; Tufted Hairgrass; Seablush; Fragrant Popcorn Flower; White Meadowfoam; Elegant Calicoflower; Large-flowered Collomia; Farewell to Spring; Showy Milkweed; Meadow Checkermallow; Anise; Chervil; Malabar Spinach; Amaranth; Hosta; Burdock.
*Many thanks to Mark at Wassail Ecological Landcare who served as a sounding board, offered guidance, and generally made sure I didn't screw things up too badly!
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