Here are a few photos from my visit to Birchfields Forest garden in Manchester. The first is of their Medlar tree, the second shows a tough ground cover strawberry that doesn't mind being walked on, and the third a wide view.
One thing I'm coming to understand is that forest gardens aren't dense and shady as you might imagine a regular forest might be. Rather they mimic young growth forest, in an ealy stage of succession, which is when they are most biodiverse, I think. Ordered Martin Crawford's 'How to make a Forest Garden', exciting, and we're ordering trees to be delivered from England (can't seem to find the dwarf varieties we want on this island, any hints anyone?). One thing is that the woody bit in Eglantine is already quite shady, so it could be that all our species will have to be shade tolerant, which is ok, but just limits us a bit more, but sure that's the craic of the thing. Stay tuned for details of a planting day. I will perhaps get around to turning the medlar picture round sometime soon also ;oj