Creating a nature garden

Our latest little project has been to start creating a little nature garden. We've got quite few wild corners here, but there's one in particular that's a really pretty little spot and that certainly won't be getting cultivated in the traditional sense. However when it comes to experimenting with Fukuoka's japanese version of permaculture - 'do nothing gardening', this is the perfect place to have a go.


This patch used to be used by overwintering cows and so the soil is really rich - it should hopefully be pretty good for growing veg. There's a little pool that you can see in the foreground of the image above - this gets really boggy and makes this patch rather inaccessible.

In the long-term, we're planning to put a pond in here, but for now, we thought it'd be fun to build in a stream. This wasn't so much planned out, but we were doing a bit of fencing and got a bit carried away. Reminded me a bit of making sandcastles and moats on the beach!

So the stream-way we've built now channels some of that boggy patch away and has made a nice feature to plant stuff along. We did this a couple of weeks ago and have since started planting out a few things - some chamomile, spearmint and sorrel (all fairly wild looking edible plants) and I'm hoping to get some tomatoes in there too - following Fukuoka's recommendations to just let them fall over and grow wild for better yields from each plant. I'll post a blog about this one once I get it going.