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As I have known from the beginning, my ideas and plans for the Forest Garden, and indeed the life of the whole garden itself, are “in constant evolution”, as it says at the top of the page! This is completely natural, and I welcome it, and sometimes it presents me with unforeseen challenges. A case in point is the rather unwelcome attention of the deer from the forest opposite the property. As mentioned last month (Blog, April 1st, 2021) there has been quite a lot of damage to the young trees, to the extent that a large part of April’s work was in providing individual netting to protect them (see below), and including a daily morning round of the garden to check on damage. So far, I have only lost one planted tree (a small-leaved lime which was completely severed at the base), and a few self-sown oak and wild cherry. Several other planted trees have been partially damaged, but I think they will survive.

You might think that the best answer would be to fence off the whole property to allow trees and other plants to grow up in peace over the next few years, but apart from being hugely expensive, this is against the whole ethos of the Project. I have often mentioned in these blog posts the idea of the Forest Garden being an integral part of the local landscape mosaic, and to put up a high deer fence would be a symbolic closing of the door on everything that surrounds it. So no, no fences thank you! The netting protection that has been installed doesn’t look particularly nice but it seems to be doing the job. In fact the problem will exist for quite some time yet, as the Forest Garden develops and each year young, juicy plants are added to tempt the browsers. No doubt my approach to this will evolve too, but for me it’s a question of learning to live with the deer, not against them!