Why Dartington Forest Garden Matters

Last week, Dartington Hall Trust gave eviction orders to the groundbreaking 31-year-old, 2-acre Dartington Forest Garden that has inspired and educated thousands of practitioners from around the world. The garden’s founder, Martin Crawford, has said that “throwing us off is not the same as giving a tenant in a building notice; they can easily move. This food forest is irreplaceable. It is literally priceless.”

Dartington Forest Garden (Photo taken by Agroforestry Research Trust)

Our Forest Garden Society at the University of Sussex heard the news on Thursday last week and wanted to do something. We set up a petition on Change.org, expecting a few hundred signatures at most … it is now at over twenty-one thousand and continues to grow. Influential figures ranging from George Monbiot to Rob Hopkins have voiced their support for the campaign and a community of resistance has formed to prevent the destruction of Dartington Forest Garden.  In this article, I explain why. 

Dartington Forest Garden has been in existence since 1994 when a 2.1-acre field was converted into a demonstration forest garden with a variety of trees, shrubs and ground covers producing fruits, nuts and other useful crops. The garden is the centrepiece of the work of the Agroforestry Research Trust (ART) which was founded by its director Martin Crawford in 1992 with the aims of ‘educating and conducting research into all things agroforestry’. ART offers courses in forest garden design, tours of the garden and consults on other forest gardens around the country. In May 2021, ART held the first International Forest Garden Symposium bringing together forest garden practitioners from all around the world. 

“The two highly successful Symposiums over the last 4 years demonstrated both the international interest and concern over food production and nutrition by young entrepreneurs and seasoned food forest growers,” says Dr. John Parry MBE, Hon. Senior Lecturer in Education, University of Sussex. “The Dartington Forest Garden is a vital living experiment and the practical wisdom that it generates and which is passed on to course attendees is very special”. 

A forest garden is unique because (as its name suggests) it is a garden that mimics the structure of young forests. It contains a diverse range of perennial plants with a canopy layer that offers protection along with dwarf trees, shrubs, climbers, perennial herbs, vegetables, and lots of ground cover. This diversity offers resilience to pests and diseases as well as attracting large numbers of wildlife from pollinating insects to birds to small mammals (and humans of course!) 

Jo Homan set up a forest garden in Finsbury Park and has been to Dartington Forest Garden many times. She describes the garden as “such a unique site because there are few examples of mature forest gardens in the UK … there are lots of unusual plants there, like Japanese plum yew, which is very slow growing and unusual because it produces fruit in the shade. The opportunity to sample these plants and see what they look like when they’re fully grown is really rare, and irreplaceable.”

Jo Homan with Martin Crawford

The Dartington Hall Trust controversially closed the influential eco-school Schumacher College last year, which now continues as Schumacher Wild, as it transforms itself in the process of finding a new home. The Save Our Schumacher campaign formed in response, successfully campaigning to resume postponed courses in September 2023. However, after the college's permanent closure in 2024, another year was not secured for many students. The campaign gained significant media coverage and secured an extension for some students. Similarly, the Save Dartington Forest Garden campaign has attracted national media attention due to the shared feeling expressed in the Guardian that it would be a “tragedy if the garden vanished.”  Many feel galvanized by the aim to secure the site for the long term. Reflecting on the fact that Trustees did not set foot in the garden until this past week in the wake of the media backlash, George Monbiot observed, “It makes me wonder how many other wonderful things at Dartington (the Trust) have destroyed without ever seeing them.”

Rob Hopkins and Martin Crawford

At the University of Sussex, we have a 1.5-acre forest garden that is only 5 years old. The University’s garden was directly inspired and informed by Dartington Forest Garden. It’s a key focus of two undergraduate modules, set up by Dr John Parry, that explore global issues of climate change, biodiversity loss, and social and ecological justice through the campus garden. “Dartington Forest Garden offers an example of sustainable food production, but it also offers a vision of something that students and staff can do themselves,” says Dr Perpetua Kirby, Assistant Professor in Childhood & Youth at University of Sussex, who now leads the Forest Garden modules.

Martin Crawford (left) with Dr John Parry, Bryn Thomas of Brighton Permaculture Trust and student Robbie Hoar on a planning visit in March 2020 for the University of Sussex Forest Garden

I chose these electives and was part of last year’s cohort in designing a nuttery for the garden and planting the Mediterranean and herb areas. We also hosted primary and secondary schools in the garden and designed educational resources for the children. I wish I had been to a forest garden when I was that age, for, like many kids, my closest and most frequent contact with nature was the grass of a football pitch. I liked sports, films, music, books, WWE … a forest garden didn’t matter to me then or, obviously, to the adults in charge. The UK is one of the world’s most nature-depleted countries – in the bottom 10% globally for biodiversity. Yet in the south of England, we still have a number of endangered species from the European hedgehog to the hazel dormouse, the turtle dove to the European eel. We have nature worth protecting.

There was one picture book that did capture my imagination when I was young and, unbeknownst to me, it was about a forest garden. “Weslandia” (Fleishmann and Hawkes, 1997) tells the story of Wesley, a boy regarded as ‘different’ by his classmates, mocked and made fun of, but one summer, Wesley nurtures an unknown food crop in his parents’ garden – thought to be a weed by his neighbour – and in the process creates a forest garden and a new civilization! He christens it ‘Weslandia’. He uses his crop for many purposes from eating its delicious fruit to using the bark to weave a hat and the inner plant fibres to make a robe. It is fantastical, of course, but captures the wonder a forest garden can inspire and the amazing diversity of its uses. 

In tropical climates, like Wesley’s, forest gardens (or home gardens as they are more commonly called) have existed for thousands of years, but in temperate climates they are a much more recent innovation. Robert Hart’s garden in England, established in 1979, was the first temperate forest garden to be documented and these forest gardens have the unique challenge of a colder, darker climate and therefore require careful planning to ensure enough light can pass through the canopy layer. Martin Crawford, who established Dartington Forest Garden, was inspired by Robert Hart’s work and has since played a vital role in deepening research and understanding of temperate forest gardens, with Dartington Forest Garden at the heart of this. 

The design stage is vital for forest gardens, as they are complex systems that serve many purposes. Nitrogen-fixing plants like Alders and Elaeagnus take nitrogen from the air and make it available to other plants, and deep-rooting plants like Comfrey and Sorrel raise phosphate and potash sources into the topsoil for other plants. Perennial ground cover protects the microorganisms and mycorrhizal fungi connections in the soil and in general, once designed and established, a forest garden is self-sustaining requiring very little intervention compared to conventional gardens. 

Martin Crawford’s book Creating a Forest Garden (Green Books, 2010) was the key text for our course and was used by students in the design and planning of the garden. Responding to climate change is an important part of the course and a strength of forest gardens which are resilient by design and therefore better able to deal with weather extremes. In Dartington Forest Garden, important research on carbon storage has been conducted and in our Forest Garden at Sussex, we planted a Mediterranean area with plants more suited to the changing climate in the UK. 

Here’s a short National Geographic film that captures the uniqueness of this garden.

Students and I from the forest garden modules decided to set up Forest Garden Society in February 2024. We were inspired to meet every Tuesday and help take care of the garden, from weeding and watering to mulching and planting, ending with a pint at the nearby bar. We launched a Forest Garden Festival in September 2024, having a sound system, DJs, and over 200 people in the garden for Freshers. We’ve had numerous workshops this year from shaggy inkcap mushroom painting to bench-making and have been designing arts and crafts for the next Festival on the 4th April (with live music this time). This description of what we do neatly captures our three purposes as a society: (1) taking care of the Forest Garden, (2) promoting nature-based art & culture and (3) building community on campus.

University of Sussex Forest Garden Committee in April 2024 - (from left) Riley Merrington-Glen, Isla Thorpe, Theo Hutchings, Luke Higgins, Jack Cooper (lying flat) 

We set up the petition to try to save Dartington Forest Garden because we felt an immense value in this place that had inspired and taught us. One of our society core team, Riley Merrington-Glen, grew up 5 minutes from Dartington and visited when he was young: “I remember eating the strange, delicious fruit leather from the garden, and the feeling of being transported into another world; it inspired me then and continues to now. Dartington Forest Garden is a special place with tremendous value and we need to protect it.” 

The 20k+ signatures show the extent of the wider community that feels the same. 

Sign the petition and spread the word.  

Save Dartington Forest Garden!

https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-destruction-of-the-world-renowned-dartington-forest-garden