growing trees for coppicing for firewood

[Amaranth]

To help with the planning I would talk with UK and French permaculturists about what to grow and where to place it. Even if you can't put everything in at once, planning it all now will save lots of problems in the future. You might even offer to have a permaculture group or a woodland management group run a design course using your land as the design example to get lots of good ideas about what to do. For example it's good to put trees that lose their leaves on the southside of your house (in the UK and Europe, opposite in NZ) so that it shades it in the summer, but allows maximum sun into the house in the winter. Evergreens work well to the north of the house to shield it from cold winter winds.

In the UK there are woodland and coppice workshops periodically. Maybe they would know about French ones.

I'd leave space for a large food garden of annual crops for the future. If you like for several years you could sow pulses alternated with high carbon material crops and use them to improve the soil rather than eating them. Or you could cover the area in compost piles and let them turn into soil in the style of lasagne gardening. After about 3 years usually the herbicides and pesticides that previous farmers used would be broken down, so you could grow organic food on the land. At this point, you'd probably be more in a position to start growing a larger percentage of your own food.

Reading a variety of permaculture books is very helpful.
http://www.permaculture.co.uk/main2.html

Another helpful book is How to Grow More Vegetables than you Ever Thought Possible on Less Land than You can Imagine, 7th edition by John Jeavons

[oldfella]

You aren't going to chop down that beautiful tree for firewood are you (or even your children)???

The 'tree surgeon' made me giggle.

No way will I cut down the old oak, it's the reason I bought the property, and have arranged to have my ashes scattered under the gentle giant when I pop my clogs. We have about 200 oaks on the land and replace double what we use each year and grow our own stock. we have neighbours who do the same. so I hope the future for the young, will at least, as far as heating is concerned be a little more secure.

[lucy.lists]

Thanks Amaranth for your thoughts. We're slowly starting to make friends with French families who have similar interests, so we can start making some enquiries about the permaculture scene here. We've also got some people with other home educated kids wanting to get involved in activities ... so a forest garden home education project may well be on the cards!

As I'm beginning to learn more and more there seem to be so many possibilities that it is quite overwhelming. We've always lived in terrace houses before now, with small, established gardens that we just had to caretake, basically. So while our new situation is incredibly exciting it's also a lot to take in at once.

I've sat down and drawn some sketchy plans of how the whole garden could look in a few years. I've incorporated existing 'canopy' trees, with some fruit trees having a big ? over them: if we can nurture them back into decent production over the next 2 - 3 years then they can be part of the canopy. If not then we can see what happens with them if we coppice them. I've used the existing trees as the basis for the design: basically planting the new trees in and around the existing ones, until they all join up in one way or another.

I've also planned some new trees for the canopy type layer that I just quite fancy trying - eg Medlar.

The main space in our garden will be taken up by the trees for coppice, and open grass areas (i wouldn't call them 'lawns' though!). At our last house we had one big woodburner as our only source of heating, and we got through around 2m of wood last year. When I first did my plan I was really pleased to get 100+ coppice trees in, and then I did some more research and realised it would only provide less than half of the wood we used last year. So now my plan should eventually provide at least 2m of wood a year, and perhaps even nudge up to 3m a year if we decide to plant more coppice in the orchard. Which, if we buy in a bit of oak every year, will hopefully be enough.

I was thinking willow would be good in the area where we can direct the water-butt overflow pipe. Other than that, I've planned the other coppice trees mixed and dotted around in amongst the rest of the garden.

The current "orchard" has wide spacings between the trees. Again, we're planning to do our best with the trees there, to see if we can coax some fruit from them. As far as I can tell there are walnut, cherry, peach and apple. Perhaps a pear or two. Only the walnut, cherry and one apple seem to have any kind of fruit starting. I was thinking that some fruit bushes - my Mum can supply me with gooseberry, red, black and white currants - would be great in amongst the trees, and plenty of sunlight seems to be reaching the ground at the moment.

The orchard is bordered on the driveway by a long wire fence on one side - I was thinking of blackberry, loganberry, etc along the fence.

The end of the house faces South/East ish, and we're planning a series of raised beds (using a square foot gardening type system) along here for annual veg. As the tree areas start getting established we can start planning perennials under them.

I've pretty much decided to stop worrying about 'weeds' taking over the new field bit, and, indeed the land under any of the new trees. I'm sure they'll give *something* back to the soil and we can tackle them later, as we get to them, if needs be. We are going to put our funds and energy into buying willow and ash this year - and also plant all the various tree seedlings we have in pots that people have given us (sycamore, hazel, oak, lime) - concentrating mainly on the new field area. The rest of the garden is fairly manageable, as long as we keep on top of cutting the grass. Next year and the year after we'll slowly start filling up the other coppice areas, as and when we can afford new trees.

It's a plan, anyway! And thanks for everyone's ideas that's gone into it.

[Hedgehogpie]

You're so lucky! It sounds fantastic and I'm deeply, deeply jealous (in a nice way).

Good luck with it all, and don't forget to post some pics as things progress. One last thought, have you considered situating a couple of hives in your little forest garden? I think if you could it would be a great way to complete the micro-environment circle you're creating.

[lucy.lists]

hello again Hedgehogpie.

I *have* mused on a beehive or two, but it's a whole new area of research that I don't feel capable of taking on at the mo! But it's certainly tempting, as we all love honey. :-) I worry about stings for the girls, but I know that's all surmountable. Something for the future, anyway!

I'm just in the process of ceasing my consultancy work in the U.K, so I can devote myself to the house and the girls. I'm hoping that September will be my last work trip back to the U.K. After then, I'll have more time and energy to be more self sufficient-ish.

The house needs a lot of work too .... nothing 'buildery', but it's got a large 1st floor with floorboards and also huge windows down each side - it's all just empty and waiting for interior walls. So once we have the coppice started, and the raised beds underway for veggies, I think we'll be turning our attention to the house for a while.

A couple of weeks ago we had our solar hot water installed. Next (hopefully before winter!) is the wood burner which will heat the kitchen and sitting room and, eventually, some warm air vented to the not-yet-made bedrooms upstairs.

It's a huge, scary adventure ... but it's the kind of house we can see ourselves staying in for the rest of our lives ... after selling a series of 4 houses in 6 years to get here, we're just starting to catch our breath!

My husband and I both agreed the other week that if we won the lottery, we wouldn't think of moving ... we'd just think of all the wonderful improvements we would want to make to the house (being fully off grid, basically!)

:-)

Lucy