When I studied edible forestry, the examples given were always designed and planted from scratch. They were lovely planned ecosystems in which the plants were chosen for their relationships with each other, the terrain and conditions, and the buildings. The typical urban forest garden was the restoration of a brick and rubble filled yard. There was no sense of how to create such an intricate web of useful plants in a place that is already verdant.
When we bought our house, about seven years ago, the back yard was a jungle. We could neither see nor reach the back fence 20 yards away. I had seldom seen such a collection of poisonous and problematic plants.
The soil was wonderful. The woman we bought the place from had been here fifty years, and as far as I could tell had left most of the yard fallow, with volunteer trees dropping leaves undisturbed for decades. I was thrilled by the number and variety of birds. I wanted to plant, which meant clearing, but I didn't want to clear so much or so fast as to disturb the avian inhabitants or dry out the soil.
My first thought was goats, but I was not in a position to begin keeping goats, and I didn't know where to borrow them. So we (largely my daughter) cleared it by hand.
The first things that needed to go were some of the acacias. There were a dozen or so blackwood acacias scattered around, evidently young volunteers. Some of them were growing up under the roof, so the roofers had us bring in gardeners to take the trees down so they could replace the roof. At this first round we left half a dozen of the older ones that were not as close to the house. I like the shade they provide and the year-round privacy. I wanted to leave nesting sites. Acacias fix nitrogen; I was happy to have as much free nitrogenous compost falling from the sky as I could get. And though I hate the scent of some acacia blossoms, I was fortunate that A. melanoxylon smells good to me.
It would have been good to keep the biomass from the acacias in the yard, but I was preoccupied with the restoration of the house itself and did not think of asking the tree removal guys to chip on site and leave a pile of woody debris. Ah, hindsight.
We did have plenty of debris from blackberry and ivy, which mixed with the broken glass from the old windows to make an impenetrable heap of sharp stuff. I guess the workers must have hauled much of it away, or it simply broke down, because there's no sign of it now. But if it broke down, where is all the broken glass? We certainly have some in our soil, but no great concentration.
Once the blackberry and ivy were mostly clear we could get into the yard and see what was there. We rescued an old English Walnut that was covered in ivy and almost dead. It has since been leafing out more fully each successive year, and we have been gradually shaping it so it no longer threatens to fall on the next door neighbors.
There were more than half a dozen good sized myrobalan plum trees - enough to make the whole place a thicket. Their plums were worthless, but needed to be picked up every summer or they would sprout on the newly accessible ground. The sprouts then had to be pulled before they got woody and difficult; it was easier to pick up the plums.
We have since taken down three or four, leaving one as a tall stump in hopes of growing mushrooms or hanging up laundry. It refuses to entirely die, but as the months pass I pull off fewer & fewer leaf clusters. I don't think the mushrooms I inoculated it with have much of a chance, but I keep hoping. And I finally got the idea to plant beans around it. They have just sprouted and their shade might help the mushroom mycelium keep from drying out. I'm contemplating which ones to take out next, and which are actually assets to the garden.
A fatter but shorter inoculated stump has become the center of a hugel bed that is just starting to settle in.
Thanks to the suggestion of a neighbor, two of the remaining plum trees are being topworked, one to gage, one to almond. And one of the trees turned out to have decent plums. We're not big plum eaters, but a few can be enjoyable.
