Relative Something

My friend and mentor, Ian Rowcliffe, uses the moniker, “Forest Garden Estate” to identify their property in Portugal, a place that has served as one of our primary inspirations for the land we have acquired and are developing in Wisconsin. Yesterday, I received a visit from an arborist who I have known for many years, and who managed care of the trees on our Eden Prairie property. At my request, he made a special trip out here to survey the growing things, and provide advice on issues of stewardship. The impression I am left with is that we, too, have a forest garden here!

I was aware of some evergreens, and obvious oak, maple, and poplar trees. Oh, and two willow trees.

Now I know that a lot of the evergreens are Australian pine, and may not be the heartiest tree for our region. We discovered some fungus on the needles of one, and analyzed the status of another that looks to have succumbed the drought of last summer and fall. We do also have some white pine, and the one we looked closely at appears to be doing very well, with thick, full growth throughout. He suggested I add more of those, and possibly some eastern red cedar, which I would be very happy to have.

He identified a butternut hickory behind the barn. I want to watch it for nut production. Sounds like they will be worth collecting, if any show up.

I learned there are plum trees and nannyberry viburnum (which produced an edible fruit) on the old fence line of our north border. It sounds like they are worth keeping, and will present a challenge for our goal of getting the rusty barbed wire removed. The guys pulling fence prefer to clear trees to make room for installation and maintenance of the new fence.

In several areas of the woods we have wild raspberry or blackberry, gooseberry, and elderberry bushes growing. No wonder there are so many birds!

Other trees noted were ash (which are likely doomed to the emerald ash borer that is making its way across our country), elm (which he was surprised hadn’t been taken by dutch elm disease yet), hawthorn, apple, red maple, sugar maple, choke cherry, blue beech, ironwood (hophornbeam), and both red and white oaks.

I hadn’t considered what spring will look like around here, but plenty of those trees will flower before they produce fruit, so it will be interesting to see how they behave. Some of them are growing in the partial shade under the canopy of larger trees and may not be readily apparent unless walking the trails through our woods.

I am not going to worry about the trees that are broken from past storms, and will let nature take its course. As he pointed out, I will have plenty of other things demanding attention around here, and the danger in dealing with them isn’t worth the risk.

If it didn’t get so darn cold here, I could add some camellia trees from Ian’s collection and we could call this place Forest Garden West. For now, we’ll stick with Wintervale, but I’m expecting the name we have chosen won’t do justice to the growing garden of trees and bushes that will be blooming here in the spring.