Garden Wild is a CIC dedicated to community climate action through forest gardening and native plants.
By highlighting and showcasing the benefits of food forest gardens, grown in combination with native wild flowers and plants, we aim to share knowledge and ideas with community projects across the UK.
With huge respect to Joel Pett
We have taken the ideas from the Food Forest Show Garden and developed them further, to create Wildlife Allotments. Everybody knows what an allotment is, and by concentrating on the wildlife aspects, we can introduce sustainable gardening practices such as perernnial vegetables and permanent ground cover.
We applied unsuccessfully for National Lottery funding in July 2022 for a community allotment and orchard coupled with a food forest show garden business for the town of Newcastle Emlyn (there are no allotments in the town).
The food forest show gardens will demonstrate sustainable gardening methods, plants and combinations for different sized plots, supported by workshops, with the whole process documented online.
Cornockle flower (Agrostemma githago)
We applied for funding in 2021 for the creation of a freely accessible photo gallery of Wild Flower plants, suitable for different situations and for benefitting different wildlife. Alas, we were unsuccessful.
The gallery would be useful for both forest gardens and more traditional ornamental gardens, as native plants are more beneficial as they have co-evolved with wildlife.
The architecture for the project remains in place, we just need to find a funding source.
You can see prototype pages here:
All images Creative Commons from Wikimedia Commons. You may need to refresh the page on the initial page load.
Food Forest Garden Designer
Jake has been designing and creating forest gardens since 2015, with a particular interest in the intersection between wildlife, edible and ornamental gardening. He runs a wildlife forest garden design business near Cardigan, West Wales.
Orchardist & Community Liaison
Martin has been pruning, planting and advising on orchards for 40+ years. He is co-chair of Gloucestershire Orchard Trust and has worked extensively with community groups, in West Wales and England.
Well-being
Dan works in mental health and well-being. He has a keen interest in forest gardens and the therapeutic value of gardening. He has his own 1 acre forest garden in West Wales.
Please get in touch for more information.
Photo collections for UK native wild flowers listed in the Garden Wild Spreadsheet.
All photos from Wikimedia Commons, copyright respective authors. Currently trying to code author information into photo collections!