Trial 10m x 10m Forest Gardens - Nottingham Trent Univeristy - Student request for info

Welcome! I look forward to seeing how your forest gardens evolve with your schools, university and City Council.

Apologies, we do need to update/extend and upload some key documents/reports. Our objectives in our articles of association and as agreed at the 2018 AGM. "The objects of the Company" are to carry on activities which benefit the community and in particular (without limitation) to:

• promote and advance Forest Gardening in the UK and beyond;

• inspire communities with a fresh approach to growing and eating;

• protect and enhance accessible green space;

• do this in a way that improves soil health, uses resources responsibly and efficiently, and increases biodiversity;

• explore the impact of forest gardens, and how they are gardened, on well-being;

• explore the potential of these spaces as outdoor classrooms;

• provide a model for community action that advances Sustainable Development Goals;

• contribute to wider debates around practices that support greater food sovereignty.

Jane thanks for posting the above. And welcome Verena! I'll answer your membership questions separately. I believe the assignment you're referring to is our research trial of a guild of plants that is also being marketed to the public as our 'Forest Garden in a Box'. @Tomas Remiarz is leading this project and will be designing the trial together with you. Almost 20 sites have offered to participate in the trial now. We're very excited that your university is participating. 🙂

Dear All,

I just saw Jane's post.

Please can an objective be included on forest gardens and Nutrition - to ensure forest gardeners use a nutrition (preferably nutrient dense food) lens.

Growers should be automatically thinking about fruit trees, nut trees, edible plants, heirloom/heritage/forgotten varieties, increasing biodiversity, and using brix values/refractometers to determine nutrient density of their food crops.

If this objective is explicit, it will help increase growers' awareness about the importance of growing food for nutrition to improve citizen and planetary health.

Many thanks and best wishes,

Elizabeth 

Hi Elizabeth, a Brix test is now part of our ambition. However it only measures sugar content as far as I am aware. Do you know of any other low-cost, simple to use methods of testing for other nutrients?

Hi Verena,

I'd be mpore than happ[y to discuss the setup of the trial with you. I've attached the trial outline so far for you and everyone else. I think it would be good to have a conversation with your group in particular, as in your academic setting you may be able to gather additional data as well as those collected by home and community gardeners. This may also make it more interesting as a research project for your group.

I note that the headline talks of a 10x10 metre tirial , whereas we have been planning for 10 square metre plots - the two are different but not mutually exclusive, and we could discuss this further.

If you want to have a phone or skype conversation let me know and we could arrange something over the next couple of weeks.

Thanks to everyone for your replies.

Tomas - great to have that document, thank you. There is a lot there we can incorporate into our proposal. Just to clarify that we're not on the project team to implement this (although would be great to be part of that), this is an assignment that we've chosen out of a variety of options to test our project and team working skills. We're 2nd year horticulture students and part of our brief for this projects is assessing how the project could help educationally across the curriculum, so it's interesting to hear the different perspectives, including nutrition, as it's not just ecology, wildlife, horticulturalists etc. but maybe food technology also.

The brief we has does state 10 x 10m, so 100m2 and that's what we've been working to. I'll have to check what they'd like us to continue looking at.

Tomas - a chat would be great, I'll have a chat with my team (we're meeting on Thursday) and get back to you. I may also pick your brains regarding the primary school location I'm starting to work with on their small garden space. Thanks again.

HI Verena, I think 10x10m is a good size for a trial. You could fit a number of 3x3m forest garden guilds into that and possibly some controls, which could be even better. Do get back to me once you've talked to your team, and we can discuss more details.

Thanks, Tomas. I've had a chat with the team and from what you've supplied it looks like we've got enough information for this particular assignment. The other school project that I'm involved in has a meeting this week where I'm hoping they'll take on board the idea of developing the space as a forest garden so I'll be in touch if this is looking likely. Best wishes.