A Food Forest in 24 Square Metres

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The Scale of the Problem

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I really wanted a walnut tree. I should get that out of the way early. But in a 6 metre by 4 metre garden on the cool, wet west coast of Scotland, a walnut is a fantasy. They take up too much space, they hate our summers, and they poison everything around them with juglone. So the walnut is out.

Which leaves you with 24 square metres at the end of a garden. That is not a forest. It’s a large living room with a tree in it.

When I first sketched this out, I planned for two semi-dwarf apple trees. I figured I could squeeze them in and get a bigger harvest. But sitting down with a tape measure killed that idea. Two trees with a 3-metre spread would eventually touch, shade out everything underneath, and leave no room for any actual understory. A 6x4m food forest isn’t a self-sustaining ecosystem where you let nature sort it out. Every single plant is fighting for light, and if you put two trees in there, the trees win and you lose your berries.

The Rootstock Dilemma

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So, one apple. But which apple?

I originally looked at M26 rootstock. It’s semi-dwarf, keeps the tree small, perfect for tight spaces. The problem is the roots. M26 has terrible anchorage. It needs a permanent stake just to stand up. My plot has a 1-metre dry stone wall to the north, and 1.5-metre neighbour fences to the east and west. That protects the base of the plants, but the tree canopy itself sits above the fence line. In a Scottish winter gale, an M26 canopy on a weak rootstock is basically a sail waiting to snap.

I upgraded to MM106. It’s a bit more vigorous, the canopy will get to around 4 metres, but it anchors itself properly. It can handle the wind. And because I only have one tree now, I can afford the extra metre of spread.

Splitting the Space

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But I didn’t plant it in the middle. I shifted the apple 2 metres off the east fence. This is the part of the plan I’m most pleased with. Off-centring the tree accidentally created two distinct microclimates. The eastern half of the plot is now a woodland edge — dappled shade under the apple canopy. The western half is a clearing — full sun all day.

The dry stone wall sits at the back, on the north edge. It’s only a metre high, but it absorbs heat during the day and radiates it back out at night. I put a gooseberry bush right up against it. Gooseberries tolerate shade better than currants, and the wall gives them a bit of a break from the wind.

Geometric Planting in a Fake Wilderness

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Out in the western half, in the full sun, I’m putting three currant bushes — black, red, and white. I’m not planting them in a straight row. Straight rows are a waste of space in a tiny garden. I’m putting them in a loose triangle, about 1.5 metres apart. It lets you reach the centre of the bush from multiple angles, and it’s denser. Permaculture has this bias toward curvy, “naturalistic” planting, but in 24 square metres, a loose geometric pattern works better than pretending you’re recreating a wildwood.

In the gaps between the currants — the “V” to the currants’ “A” — I’m putting in Bocking 14 comfrey. It’s a sterile variety, so it won’t seed everywhere, and the deep taproot pulls nutrients up from the subsoil. You just chop the big leaves off a few times a year and drop them around the apple tree as mulch.

Access, Paths, and Bramble Boundaries

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Down the middle of the 4-metre depth, I’m leaving a 1-metre path. You need access. If you plant right across the whole space, you’ll be standing on soil, compacting it, and fighting through thorns to harvest. Along the edges of that path, I’m putting snowdrops, primroses, maybe some wild strawberry — the kind of low, early flowers that don’t take up much room but give you something to look at when you’re walking through in March and everything else is still dormant. Wild strawberry earns its place twice: flowers in spring, fruit in summer, and it spreads gently along the path edge without becoming a problem.

The front edge of the whole space — the boundary between the food forest and the rest of the garden — gets post and wire fences for trained brambles. Blackberries on one side of the path entrance, raspberries on the other. They form a living wall across the front of the plot, framed around the path opening. I’m under no illusions here. Raspberries want to take over the world. They send runners underground and pop up metres away. In a normal food forest, that’s fine. Next to my neighbours’ manicured lawns, it’s a liability. They’re going to need root barriers.

The Ground Floor

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Underneath all of this, I’m sheet mulching the existing lawn with cardboard and a thick layer of mulch, then planting edible ephemerals. Wild garlic, three-cornered leek. They do their thing early in the year, cover the bare soil, and die back just as the apple leafs out and the comfrey gets massive.

The Five-Year Horizon

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I’m acutely aware that this isn’t a “plant it and walk away” system. The food forest literature sells this idea that you build the layers, step back, and nature does the rest. That’s a lie in 24 square metres. This is an intensively managed garden. I’ll be pruning the apple to keep light hitting the currants. I’ll be chopping comfrey. I’ll be aggressively pulling up raspberry runners before they invade next door.

And in five to ten years, the apple will win. The canopy will close over the front edge, the brambles and the front currants will start to crop less because they just won’t get enough sun. At that point, I’ll either have to thin the tree, move the bushes, or accept that the system has moved into its mature phase and the understory changes.

I don’t have a ten-year plan. I have a five-year plan. I’ll see how the canopy fills out, what’s getting shaded, and adapt. The space is too small to pretend it’s permanent.