Chicken Food for Free. Fabulous Forage 4. Roses - Forest Gardening & Feeding the Flock

When we started to think about creating a forest garden, from the canopy to the ground cover, my first thought was for roses. I love them and I always dreamed of creating a space that would be full of perfume, colour and fruit, so the old-fashioned pre-1950s and by no coincidence French roses, were the ones I sought. Ironically, in the 1990s, when we really started the major plantings, France was the last place they could be found. Again I had recourse, as with the hedging, to the trusty BMW tourer and again it is surprising how many bare rooted rose bushes you can strap onto the back of a motorbike. There is an accompanying film at the end of this article.

Creating The Carpentry For The Canopy

Twenty-five years ago a customs certificate was required to transport roses from the UK to France and so we arrived with a garden's worth of rose bushes. The basis of this was 'The Empress Joséphine Collection' from Peter Beales of Norfolk, who have an impressive range of ancient roses. Coals to Newcastle it might have been but France was still gripped in her own particular version of what I call Wheatcroft fever. The roses above, offspring of Sir Cedric Morris and/or Rosa filipes 'Kiftsgate', self-set from seed, are a fine example of what happens when your forest garden, poultry and wild birds work in synergy. We have examples of self-set roses all over the garden and cuttings I have taken, for example this one (left), which at last estimation is creating a canopy of over 81m² (900 square feet).

Himalayan climbing roses such as Rosa filipes 'Kiftsgate' (right) and the double

flowered 'Rambling Rector' (above) seen here growing through the Bourbon rose Zigeuner Knabe in our ad hoc flower border, are ideal for forest gardens because they need space and freedom to develop. It is said that Rosa filipes will cover everything in its path and indeed it has curved thorns, which act like hooks, allowing it to ramble freely.  Here it can be seen climbing over 8m (26 ft) into our walnut tree. These roses are essentially classed as 'wild' and usually flower once around late June/July/August. Technically, after creating the carpentry over the first few years, the good gardener should thereafter remove all old flowering stems at ground level, immediately after the petals have dropped. This allows for new canes to develop for the following year. However, if I had followed this advice, not only would I have lost a glorious canopy but also the decorative, delicious and useful fruit which feeds us all, wild birds included, throughout the Winter.

Himalayan Climbing Roses are prolific fruiters and make excellent rose hip syrup too!

 

From Canopy To Ground Cover Old Roses Have It All

Antique roses come in a minimalist palette of  rich reds, golds and purples, delicate pinks, creams, primroses, lavenders and whites. They also have an incredible depth of perfume, some with fragrant leaves and a relatively short but glorious flowering season. Even so, here in France we often get a secondary or remontant flush of blossoms in the late Autumn. These roses also have a fantastic crop of fruit, from the large and highly prized hips of the Rugosas (above) to the delicate but prolific harvest from the Himalayan climbers. Old roses are better viewed in situ, with their short stemmed nodding heads, they will fill the garden with fragrance and colour. In hot weather, their scent is breathtaking and as an extra dimension, the colours of certain varieties change with the barometer. Paul's Lemon Pillar below a 1915 Hybrid Tea makes a beautiful and useful addition to our beech hedging, adding dessert to the salad, with its succulent perfumed petals.

Autre temps autre moeurs, after the Second World War came a whole new fashion for crazy coloured, long stemmed  roses that flowered repeatedly. They produced limited or no fruit, often had little scent and above all could be viewed in a vase besides the television rather than out in the garden. The fashion for smaller gardens, non-productive spaces mostly put down to lawns, the availability of imported citrus to cover Vitamin C requirements, the passion for flower arranging, particularly reflected the zeitgeist of post rationing 1954 Britain. Enter also a whole new breed of growers such as the aforementioned Harry Wheatcroft to champion the highly coloured modern Hybrid Tea and the upright, restricted growth of Floribundas. Added to the mix were the contemporary flower arrangers such as Constance Spry, who demanded uniform blooms that would look good for longer in a vase. Food forest gardening changed all that, witnessing that even within a smaller space in which to plant than the dedicated rosariums and wildernesses of old, largesse and luxurious growth could not only be accommodated but celebrated.

From left clockwise: Mme Alfred Carrière, Guinée, Roserie de l’Haÿ, Zigeuner Knabe and Othello

Madame Alfred Carrière

Meg Merrilies

Although many but not all ancient rose varieties may flower only once in a twelvemonth, if you plan your garden well you will have blooms all year round. Some individual old roses, such as my well-established cutting of the Noisette climber, Madame Alfred Carrière from 1879, will repeat bloom even throughout the Winter months. You can see that our  Roserie de l’Haÿ,  a Rugosa from 1910 is just over its first flowering of the season. Above it, the beautiful deep crimson of Guinée, a Hybrid Tea climber from 1938, is just coming into flower, as is David Austin's, Othello and Zigeuner Knabe, with intertwined Rambling Rector not yet in view. Similarly Rosa rubiginosa 'Meg Merrilies', (photo below and right) a wild rose introduced in 1899, is here seen in full flower, whilst another self-set white wild rose, parentage Rosa filipes 'Kiftsgate' and Sir Cedric Morris (foreground) is still tightly in bud.

 

Roses As Food For Humans And Birds

Shady Lady - Big Cuckoo sneaking a bloom

Apart from the beauty and joy they provide, a rose is such a suitable forest garden plant because its food value extends to the Autumn and Winter months and if you plan it carefully, can start producing petals and leaves from very early Spring onwards. Parson's Pink or Old Blush China, from 1752 is a rose celebrated by Thomas Moore in his poem 'The Last Rose Of Summer'. I have had it flowering here in December. The wild rose Canary Bird, we've had flowering in February. The other additional resource is the David Austin collection of Roses, a grower who started in the 1950's to create a quintessential English Rose, which would have both the beauty and charm of the old roses but with the repeat flowering and cut flower requirements of the post war gardeners. The idea with roses is that our birds should wait until the petals fall but try telling that to a mother hen with many hungry mouths to feed, a whole Gloire du Dijon bloom is a tasty lunch for twelve!

As far as the leaves are concerned my poultry seem to prefer, those of the Alba/Noisette rose from 1835, Mme Plantier, (below) probably because it produces a fine crop of delicate, delicious looking leaves at the beginning of the flowering season on stems, which unlike most old roses are virtually thornless.

In the main and although all my birds eat rose petals, it seems to be a particular delicacy given by Mother hens to their chicks. As for the fruit or hips, not only are they highly prized but my chickens seem to have their own individual preferences for how to eat them.

 

Here's the film:

Snacking on rose hips

In the next article link below I will be looking in detail at the nutritional and medicinal value of rose petals and with some more suggestions on varieties.

Thanks for dropping by and do feel free to share experiences or ask for further information in the comment section. If you have enjoyed this piece and found it useful think about sharing it with your family and friends, on social media and also maybe about joining this blog and/or subscribing to my Youtube channel or even supporting us on Patreon or

It all helps to keep me going!

Until next time, all the very best from sunny Normandie! Sue

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©  Sue Cross 2016

Bare Roots - Creating food forest layers, maximum plantings for minimum cost.

When I was thinking about how to design and plant our garden and see it grow from the rough field and limited top soil stage, one of my first considerations was that we were going to spend most of our waking hours in it.  As this house and garden were bought as a long-term escape plan and because we were working and living in a town constantly surrounded by noise, our basic initial requirement was privacy and tranquillity,  a wild forest garden seemed perfect. 

Once we began to live here permanently and eventually to keep poultry, the natural environment it provided to do this, along with the addition of forage provided by the trees and plants became ever more valuable.

Transformation and Transmogrification - Open field to food forest garden

We also love to eat outside, so the idea of being surrounded by trees, plants and wildlife (at this point we had no poultry) was also a major consideration. (We had to replace the tiles of the house as a result of the 1999 tempest so the greenery also did a great job of removing the glare of modernity.)

One of my favourite memories of my childhood was of playing in the small woodland on our own farm or dreaming about the vast mediaeval forest on the neighbouring one.  The silence of woodland and forest is something you either love or hate, there is no middle ground. It is for that very understanding of the human psyche, that the word panic derives from the fear of the forest sprite, the Greek god Pan. He is supposed to have rustled leaves of bushes and forest vegetation as travellers passed through his domain, engendering irrational fears and flight! Having eaten many an evening meal by candlelight in the middle of trees and long grass surrounded by gangs of marauding hedgehogs, snorting wildly and crunching up snails, I can empathise.

The Canopy and Sub-Canopy

We started out to create the canopy and sub-canopy or as Gertrude Jekyll, would refer to it the 'carpentry' of the garden. I was working on the principle of beginning at the top and working down. The canopy was the part of the garden that would need the longest time to establish itself and in an open field with clay soil, was imperative for soil structure, drainage and shade. Initially I had very little knowledge of our present climate and growing potential of the soil, so I chose the best possible size of specimens for our budget. Although, with greater experience of the land and microclimate and thus its possibilities, we realised that growing the sub-canopy and even the canopy from seed and/or cuttings was quite viable. We also visited an Ecocampsite down in the Lot, where they had a much younger garden than ours but with beautiful large specimen trees and bamboo. We were advised that the holes for planting were dug with a small mechanical digger. So if you are building a house on site at the same time as establishing your garden and have access to machinery or better still, a large group of friends, you might think of this valuable tip of digging a huge receiving hole for the roots. You can do this and even fill in the holes with loose soil and compost until such time as you are ready to plant.

Bare Roots

 

Unless you are very young and only looking to live in your forest garden in your dotage, time is of the essence and the good news is, faster growing forms of plants are cheaper! Bare rooted refers to plants that are grown in the open and then dug up for sale, when dormant from late Autumn to early Spring. For this reason they can be also sent by carrier, so your choice of varieties, quality and price is much wider. I've always found bare roots to to be stronger and quicker to take off when replanted. This is because they are not suffering from lack of nutrient nor pot bound as large subjects can become in containers. Some of the main plants we have bought this way, are roses, fruit bushes, trees, including hedging. In the past and in order to build up a good number, we hoarded 'Birthday' money and gave trees as presents to each other. 

Warning: when we lived in the UK, I used to see a particularly fine tree in our local nursery and reserve it for Andy until such time as we were leaving for France. On going back to fetch it I would often find it had grown rather larger than expected. This beautiful Betula utilis var. 'jacquemontii' aka the Himalayan birch (above) and this gorgeously rich Prunus serrula var. tibetica aka birch-bark or Tibetan cherry (right) had to be wound around the foot well and entwined around my feet to reach their destination. Furthermore don't worry if you think something is in the wrong place, if you are careful, you can move even quite large trees. The Italian white peach (above top) moved three times before it was happy enough with its soil and aspect to produce a good crop. 

Some of the  first plants we bought to create our garden were a parcel of bare root roses from Norfolk, these included a selection known as the Empress Joséphine collection. Some of these were for the canopy and some for lower levels and ground cover. These we hauled over from the UK on the back of our motorbike. It might seem, as the name suggests, coals to Newcastle but at the time France was still in the dying throws of the equivalent of 'Wheatcroft fever'. This meant that all that was on offer in roses were, to me, bright, blowsy modern hybrid teas with no scent and precious little value for food or to a wild garden. Above are a selection of the best culinary and medicinal roses, rosa.galica officinalis or the Apothecary Rose (centre right with the golden stamens) lives up to its name. It makes fabulous ice cream and I have used rose petals to make rose water, which I have applied to great effect in eye baths and compresses (see my article on treating eye problems with rosewater here).

Rambling Rector (above) was another of my choices, a beautiful double rambler, seen here growing through another great culinary rose, the Bourbon, Zigeuner Knabe. Then of course there is the fabulous rosa. filipes 'Kiftsgate' (below) which gives your forest garden canopy the Sissinghurst touch.

Our hens love roses, leaves and petals and apple blossom, many flowers from trees and shrubs are actually a valuable and freely available source of good wild nutrition for you and your birds and luckily most of the time the latter will be content to eat them as they fall. In fact many of the trees we have planted, have provided extra nutrient for our birds, whether wild or domesticated. Our Amelanchier (Serviceberry), for example, (taken bare rooted from a friend's garden), the hens eat every petal as they drop, we never get a beautiful white carpet from it as we do from the apple orchard.

Furthermore, although we eat the petals and hips of our roses we also had additional food value from them in honey, as my neighbour who has hives bought us down a kilo of his harvest in recognition of the food we had provided for his bees.

Our other major bare-root purchases  were hedging beech and hornbeam, most necessary here as wind and weather protection from the wild sea breezes. Building up a series of hedges in a garden provides not only a series of garden 'rooms', this might seem formal for a forest garden. However, by its very nature, food forest gardens have no blueprint as such, each one being unique to the individual gardener. 

To me hedges give a wonderful sense of space and discovery as you travel through a garden, they also provide a fantastic safe habitat for wildlife and of course nesting for birds. Hens love hedges too, in the Early Spring and Summer they will use them as corridors, 'grazing' on the nutritious leaves and  roosting high up in them to catch a sea breeze during the heat of the day. I also use strategic hedging to break up flight paths for marauding birds of prey, which is exceedingly necessary if you have pigeons, particularly white fantails and free-ranging tiny chicks.

Hedges also, of course, are very important for protecting poultry from the rain. Although in the case of these two chamois Polish brothers, lowering their frizzled plumage, whilst standing between the current bushes and the beech hedges seems to do just as well.






The next part of this series will look at building up the canopy and sub-canopy as well as the other layers of your food forest,  from seeds and cuttings.
 

Thanks for dropping by and if you have enjoyed this piece and found it useful think about sharing it and also may be about joining this blog. Please also feel free to ask questions or make comments in the section below.
All the very best,
Sue
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©  Sue Cross 2015