today is publication day!

It is nearly four years from when I first conceived of the possibility of unearthing some principles underlying forest gardening; there have been many hours, days, weeks, months of writing, re-writing, re-re-writing and editing, who knows how much watching and waiting, thinking, reading, considering and reframing …. such an enormous amount of work goes into writing a book.  But having said that, it is now done and ‘the garden of equal delights‘ is published today.

It is just as well that I am pleased with the result!   Not only because it is an achievement, but more particularly because I think this book unfolds and explains a different perspective on the relationship between a gardener and their garden (forest garden or otherwise).  This is a change of perspective that puts the garden and the natural world at the heart of everything, it effectively demotes the gardener from controller at the apex of a hierarchical pyramid looking down on their dominion, to a much more humble place alongside the many other members of the garden community.  To find this more lowly place there is so much to learn and also much to un-learn.  It is my greatest hope that every reader finds much more within the pages than they were expecting and that they then go on to find and live out a very different and deeper relationship both with their own garden and also with the wider world beyond.

And this is how today finds the actual garden of equal delights in the gentle sunshine and a little less gentle breeze up here on our hill in the Welsh borderlands.  I have just walked round and taken a few very quick photos to illustrate a few of the principles of forest gardening.

peering through a small part of a complex, interconnected ecology – from an apple tree across fruit bushes and perennial vegetables, herbs and flowers to another apple tree in the background

 

polyfloral flowers (phacelia)

 

more polyfloral flowers (thyme)

 

edible abundance ripening, and I will harvest ‘only enough’

 

and more edible abundance on the way for the birds (and me)

 

welcome the wild

 

life cycle gardening

 

and always continue to welcome the wild