Martin Crawford
A two-acre temperate forest garden at Dartington, kept and measured for thirty years — the reference example of the form.
The record
- Standing
- active practice
- Based
- Agroforestry Research Trust · Dartington, South Devon, England
- Home ground
- A two-acre forest garden on the Dartington Estate, started in 1994 on land leased by the Trust.
- Reach
- Over 50,000 visitors, and a site hosting scientific research including work on carbon storage. Widely described as the best example of a food forest in the temperate world.
- Before that
- More than thirty years in organic agriculture and horticulture — the Yarner Trust in North Devon, growing for a small hotel on the Isle of Iona, restoring the walled gardens of a mid-Devon manor house, and running an organic market garden and tree nursery in South Devon.
Standing is this studio’s placement of the work, not a ranking of the person, and it is the one line here that is a judgement rather than a cited fact.
The work
A forest garden is easy to describe and hard to believe until you stand in one, which is the practical reason the Dartington site matters. It is a temperate, multi-storey, largely perennial food system that has been running for thirty years and can be walked through.
The Trust’s other function is a nursery and seed operation, which is the unglamorous part that makes the rest reproducible: a design idea nobody can source plants for stays an idea.
Crawford also teaches the design courses and writes the reference books, and the site has carried research on carbon storage — so the claims about what a forest garden holds are attached to measurements rather than to enthusiasm.
Where to read them
Sources for this record
Corrections
This record was assembled from the sources above, and nothing in it was inferred to fill a gap. If it is about you and it is wrong, or you would rather not be listed, write and it changes.