The horticulturist known on social media as Fluent.Garden, Christina Chung, argues in this book for “layered gardens” where plants provide complete coverage from the ground up to the highest stalks and branches, with each plant supporting the others by attracting pollinators, providing vertical support, improving the soil, and keeping out weeds, pests, and invasives.
“That’s the main concept of this book,” she says, “to plant up all the layers, all the spaces, of your garden with edible plants to make a different kind of more beautiful, more ecologically sound, less labor-intensive, edible garden.”
She identifies eight layers: canopy plants (taller trees), subcanopy (smaller fruit or nut trees), shrubs (mostly berries), herbaceous perennials (asparagus and more), climbers (grapes), annual vegetables, groundcovers and root crops. Not every garden is large enough for all of these layers, she admits, but planting several of them will produce benefits.
Building a garden with layers and a wide range of plants will undoubtedly attract greater biodiversity to the garden, along with especially beneficial insects. And because organic matter is plentiful and tilling is rarely done once the layered garden is established, soil health will improve and close planting will squeeze out weeds.