The Garden of Equal Delights The practice and principles of forest gardening

Forest gardens are much in the news as a form of sustainable, small-scale agriculture that can help us in the face of the climate and environmental crisis. A forest garden is edible, fertile, abundant, and beautiful because it functions as an ecosystem. The forest gardener is an integral part of this ecosystem. But what do forest gardeners do? Where and how can you start? What do you do when the weeds and slugs come? Anni Kelsey answers these questions here from experience. The ‘garden of equal delights,’ after which this book is named, is her forest garden high on a wet and windy Welsh hillside. Rejecting control and a regimen of planned interventions in favour of a more intimate, knowing, and connected relationship with her garden, Anni describes how she learned to garden as an intrinsic—and equal—part of the ecosystem. She also sets out a set of very practical principles that other forest gardeners can follow in their own preferred way. This is an inspiring story for experienced, new, and would-be forest gardeners and for anyone longing to engage with nature more deeply.

Anni Kelsey grew up in the suburbs of Reading at a time when there were still fragments of the natural world left close by – woods, a lake, tiny streams and a few large trees – and when children were allowed to spend more time unsupervised. Walking everywhere in all weathers, and spending much of her free time playing outside, gave her ample opportunity to watch these slivers of nature and to fall in love with them. ? In her late twenties she escaped to west Wales and immediately felt very connected to the landscape, the people and the culture and took the opportunity to study both geography and the Welsh language as a mature student at Aberystwyth University. Circumstances took her back across the border to the suburbs of Telford and, though she would have loved to work out of doors, her employment consigned her to a series of desks in many different workplaces. ? Discovering forest gardening marked a significant turning point in her life and she wrote Edible Perennial Gardening in 2014 as a practical guide to growing perennial vegetables and polycultures. When the opportunity arose to move back to Wales she seized it and she now lives in the hilly border country of eastern Powys. Now retired from employment you will often find her outside – in the garden, the woods or out on the hills, or else tucked up somewhere cosy reading a book!