Master My Garden Podcast
Master My Garden podcast with John Jones. The gardening podcast that helps you master your own garden. With new episodes weekly packed full of gardening tips, how to garden guides, interviews with gardening experts on many gardening topics and just about anything that will help you in your garden whether you are a new or a seasoned gardener. I hope you enjoy.John
Master My Garden Podcast
EP311 Pippa Chapman Chats Permaculture Design, Gardening, Her New Book & Much More: Small Gardens, Big Permaculture Wins
Forest gardening doesn’t need acres or a cabin dream; it needs a clear purpose, one smartly chosen tree, and a layered understory that works as hard as it looks good. We sit down with permaculture designer and author Pippa Chapman to show how small, everyday gardens can deliver big yields, rich wildlife habitat, and year-round beauty without chemicals or overwhelm.
Pippa traces her move from conventional head gardener to organic, permaculture-led practice, revealing why values shape method: no herbicides, more observation, and design that treats maintenance as development. If you’ve ever felt “forest” means “too many trees,” this conversation flips the script. One canopy can unlock space for the real engine room—shrubs, herbs, perennial vegetables and groundcovers—so your beds offer colour, food and pollinators across the seasons. We dig into practical plant choices: Geranium “Rozanne” for a six-month nectar run, yarrow for first aid and insects, Taunton Deane kale for flavour and structure, Hablitzia as a climbing spinach, and currants, gooseberries and Japanese wineberries for preserves and snacks.
The heart of Pippa’s new book "Permaculture Planting Designs" is purpose-led design. Start with what you want—jams, herbal teas, craft fibres, or a pollinator corridor—then lift a ready-made themed plan or adapt it to your site. You’ll hear candid notes on which perennials taste great and which to skip, how to establish layers without letting bullies take over, and why small spaces benefit from a hands-on, light-touch rhythm: dense planting, timely edits, and simple tools instead of sprays. We also talk about her YouTube teaching and a new podcast for time-poor growers who want results without fuss.
If you’re ready to turn a tiny plot into a resilient, edible, beautiful ecosystem, this episode is your blueprint. Subscribe, share with a gardening friend, and leave a review with the first plant you’d add to your understory.
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Until next week
Happy gardening
John
How's it going everybody and welcome to episode 311 of Master My Garden Podcast. Now, this week's episode, I'm covering a topic that we have delved into in sort of different ways over the last 12 months, and we're talking about the subject of forest gardening and permaculture. And I'm delighted to be joined by an expert in this field, I guess, is Pippa Chapman. And Pippa has written some books on this. Her most recent book is Permaculture Planting Designs. And she's also written The Plant Lovers Backyard Food Forest Garden. So a longish title, but the the idea behind it is creating forest gardens and permaculture design. The really eye-catching thing with this is we've spoken about, as I said, permaculture before, but it has been on a sort of a bigger scale, as in more homesteading type size gardens previously. But Pippa really talks a lot about bringing those principles and coring them down into sort of everyday gardens and smaller gardens. So I think that's going to be very, very interesting. So the conversation, there's lots of different angles we can go. She's a forest gardener, YouTuber, uh podcaster, which I didn't know until a couple of minutes ago. Um so there's lots of strings to the ball, and the conversation could go in in many directions. But Pippa, you're very, very welcome to Master My Garden Podcast.
SPEAKER_01:Hi, it's really nice to be here.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, and and lots to talk about. So uh YouTube, recent podcast, uh new book on the go, previous book still out there, working daily in permaculture and forest gardening. So there's loads we can talk about. So maybe just as a way of getting started, just give me a little bit of the backstory that has sort of led you into permaculture and forest gardening uh as it is today.
SPEAKER_01:Uh yeah, well, I started my horticulture career um just uh I'd I'd had a failed um beginning as an artist. I decided I went and did a degree in sculpture and then decided that's not what I wanted to do with my life quite quickly. Um and um and so I went to do a bit of work experience at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, which is um where they do big sculptures in very natural settings. And I ran this session that was all about making sculptures with uh twigs and branches and things like that. And and when I came away from it, I realized that the thing that I'd enjoyed the most was actually being outside and being in nature, much more than the creative artistic side of it. Um, and so I got a job in a garden centre where I learned absolutely loads about um different plants, and um I was really lucky that there was a garden design business attached to the garden centre. So I got to do a little bit of um almost apprenticing with the people who owned the garden centre to do a little bit of garden design at the right at the very beginning of my career, which was quite lucky. Yeah, and then I got a job as a gardener, which very quickly um turned into a job as a head gardener um with really basically no experience at all, and really threw me in at the deep end and had a very steep learning curve. But the more that I gardened there, the more I realised that wasn't the way that I wanted to garden. So I've always been really passionate about wildlife and the natural world and wildflowers, and then to have got this what would have seemed like an amazing job as a head gardener on this large estate, actually it was really um very conflicted because they wanted perfect lawns and no weeds and and the you know, there wasn't the uh I was so early on in my career I didn't I didn't sort of I just did things like put weed and feed down on lawns without with just thinking, well, I have to do this because that's what you know that's what is required of me. Yeah, that's my job. And so after a few years, I just thought, actually, this I can't do this anymore. It goes against everything that I believe in to keep managing a garden in this way and destroying nature and um and so I just decided that I needed to do something different. So I went to do a year's apprenticeship at one of the Royal Horticultural Society gardens called Harlow Carr, which is not far from me in Harrogate in Yorkshire. And one of the reasons that I chose that garden to train at, um, rather than any of the other gardens, was because that garden at the time, I mean, this was 2007, um, so quite a while ago now, yeah, was because this the at Harlow Carr they were really sort of championing sustainability and different ways of doing things. So before um most other places were doing that kind of thing, you know, they were trying to um put in swales and they had a big forest garden planned, which unfortunately never actually happened. But um, it was just amazing to go there and and learn all about these different ways of doing things. Um, everything was organic. Uh, so it was just a wonderful place to go and learn all these um really sustainable ways of gardening. And while I was there, I actually just came across a book in the bookshop um by Graham Um Bell called The Permaculture Way. And so I just thought, oh, that looks interesting. I haven't heard of permaculture before. And I just read it and I thought, this is yeah, this is it. This is exactly this is what I want to be doing. This is how I want to garden, how I want to live. And that kind of kick-started um a whole different trajectory to my career, really. I just thought that's it. I'm going to, when I left my traineeship, I started my own business with my husband. Um, and we just have right from the beginning said we're only going to do things organic. First of all, we started off saying we were just an organic gardening business. And then over time, as we had got enough clients who wanted organic gardening, we said actually we're, you know, we're a permaculture gardening business. And now it's kind of niched down even more to actually we specialise in food forests. So um, yeah, it's been an interesting journey.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, for sure. And how how just in terms of your business now, how does how do you promote that? Uh you you're promoting yourselves now as permaculture gardeners. So if you if somebody takes, you know, employs you guys to look after their garden, and you mentioned beforehand that you're looking after some gardens and they are on board with the with the approach. Has that been a difficult sort of from because it's not common. It's certainly not common here, and I doubt it was common at that time in the UK that you know someone comes in and manages your garden in this way.
SPEAKER_01:Um well, I have to say, when we started and we said we, you know, we were marketing ourselves, must have been around 2009, 2010, you know, we are an organic garden business and we only do organic gardening. It was amazing actually how quickly we our books filled up. And we were, yeah, and we were full. And actually, people were coming to us saying, Well, if you're full, do you know any other organic gardeners? Because that's what we really passionately want for our garden.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And so actually, we found that people would seek us out rather than us going along and saying, Oh, actually, can we convince you that we were going to, you know, do um organic gardening, we're going to practice permaculture. You know, how do you feel about that? People were coming to us going, oh wow, I can't believe we found a gardener who who believes in the same things as us and um will look after these gardens. So it's actually been the other way around. We haven't been convincing other people. They've actually been coming to us and seeking us out because of of their of the way that we garden.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, brilliant. So the the the desire was there among you know general house owner home homeowners to sort of garden or to have their gardens maintained in this way.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and and businesses as well, actually. It was um I can't think how many years ago now, it must be seven or eight years ago. Um, we I went to, I was supplying, we used to have a small nursery, um, and I was selling some plants to a gardener who was looking after the garden at the Ecology Building Society, which is just down the road. And while he was here uh buying some plants, he said, Oh, I don't suppose you know any permaculture gardeners who would want to take on the maintenance because he was moving away from the area. And I said, Oh, I'll come and have a look. And it's just the it was just the most beautiful garden. And um, so straight away I said, Yes, I'll do that. And and it's just been really wonderful to have businesses as well who are totally committed to to investing in a kind of more slower way of growing, because a slower way of gardening, you're not just spraying all the paving with weed killer or you know, mowing a load of grass, um, to have businesses as well that are investing in that. And then we had another business just round the corner, because it's just on the edge of an industrial estate, and they sort of walked past and said, Oh, actually, we've we've own a an orthodontist round the corner. Could you come and do us a small food forest? You know, we'd really like something like that as well. So I think both private um, you know, how homeowners but also businesses are really starting to see the value in investing in this kind of this way of gardening.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and uh we we'll move off this because I know this wasn't really what we were kind of saying we were going to talk about, but just in relation to so like typically if you especially when it comes to industrial buildings or industrial maintenance and so on, you're you're coming in and as you said, you're clearing the weeds, you're mowing the grass. Um how does it work in in your scenario? So say there is an area that you know there's a driveway or whatever it is, or a parking lot that has weeds in it. What what what's the process? How do you how do you because that's tends to be within industrial buildings, that tends to be one of the main things. We need this this area weed-free and this area looking beautiful and so on. What happens there in that process?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I think there's there's a certain understanding of letting things be a bit wilder. I think that's one of the it's sort of a mindset shift that actually that some weeds are okay because a lot of the time they're just wildflowers. And so there's a little bit of a mindset shift which has been good. And then just managing things in a way, you know, either hoeing or um using a weed burner or something like that, you know. I think once you make that commitment that you're not going to use weed killers, then you just find other ways because you just immediately rule that out, it's not even an option anymore. Then you find other ways to to manage things. And I suppose every every place is different, every place has its challenges. But I think it's that's why I like to think of what we do more as development rather than maintenance, because if there's an area that is a big issue, then we we make changes. You know, we make changes so that we can manage it in an organic and sustainable way.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, very good. Um so that brings us on to uh forest gardening, which is obviously a passion of yours, and your latest your latest book is talking about permaculture uh designs and plans. So maybe we'll start chatting about that. When it comes to uh gardens, like tip typically people are in a permaculture garden, they tend to be on a larger scale. You have these zones and your your hens are out in the further zone and you know so on. Um but when it comes to somebody who's looking to do this on a smaller scale in a smaller garden, what kind of designs, what kind of design principles, what are we looking to achieve, or how do we go about say starting uh creating a food forest and permaculture garden?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, I think when I first really started to concentrate on the smaller scale designs was um where we used to live, we had um it was set in five acres that we were rewilding. And so I'd started a forest garden as part of that five acres. So it's quite a large area, it was quite wild. Um, so you kind of typical large-scale food forest where there were there's fruit trees and shrubs and herbs and things mixed in, but within that it's really quite wild because it's on a on a large scale, it's not highly intensively managed. And but equally, because at the same time I had very young children, most of my time was spent just in my yard, uh, you know, just outside my kitchen door. That's where I spent most of my time. There were a few very small flower beds, they weren't very big. Um, but over time I actually started to turn those into a kind of forest garden as well. So we had espaliered fruit trees with um small shrubs and um flowers and herbs and perennial vegetables all mixed in together because it was I wanted it to look beautiful as well, because it was right outside our house. It was our main house garden. And when we did open days to show people around to do tours, we'd go up the hill. Well, it was quite a steep hill behind our house, up to the, you know, the wild meadows and the forest garden. And people, you know, I'd talk, I'd take people around and I'd talk to them about, you know, taking inspiration from nature and the multiple layers and creating this kind of um diverse ecosystem. And people would really love the concept and really love the idea, but just say, but I don't, you know, I don't have five acres, you know, I can't, I can't create this. It just they loved the idea of it, um, but couldn't work out how that related to their own house. And then I would take them then down to the yard where we would serve like tea and coffee and homemade cake, which is people's favourite bit, and they would come into the yard and see all the same, you know, fruit trees, fruit shrubs, perennial vegetables, herbs, and flowers, but all in a much smaller space and actually looking really beautiful because I'd just taken the same concepts that I use for ornamental garden design and just applied it to edible plants, and people would sort of say, Oh God, I could do this, you know, this is what I could do in my garden. And so that's when I kind of I really realized that if my mission in life is to help people, is to help more and more forest gardens to, you know, to happen in the world, that actually by showing people how anyone could do it, even if you've just got one small raised bed, like actually that the amount of small gardens that we have in uh the UK is absolutely huge compared to the small number of people who who own a small holding. Um, so I just I just started to feel really passionate about helping people to see that they could do permaculture, they could do forest gardening, even on a really small scale, and that it can still look really beautiful because of course we want our home gardens to look beautiful because that's why we love gardening, because we love beautiful flowers, and you know, and so that is how I came to really specialise in doing things on a smaller scale, really.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think you've hit the nail on the head there. People know a little bit about forest gardening and permaculture, uh, but it's scaling it back down to a size that that that works for their garden. But also you mentioned there that you use the same principles that you would in ornamental gardening. So I'm presuming you're talking about your layering of the border, bigger plants to the to the back, um, mid-plants and and smaller ones to the front. So maybe we'll chat about a sort of a good design, what types of plants we're talking about in each layer, just so people can sort of visualize it from them for themselves.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. So I um when I wrote my first book, the um Plant Lover's Backyard Forest Garden, that was all about how to kind of scale down forest gardening, how to create your own designs um of forest gardens. But then I still had people just saying, Can you just tell me what to plant? You know, can you just can you just give me a plan? Um and so I then decided that actually I would create this second book, which is permaculture planting design. And it's very much focusing on the planting, um, because there's so much to permaculture design, you know, there's where you cite different things, the zones and all of that. And I wanted to really specifically focus on the plants. That's my big passion. Um and so I I then created these different themed gardens. So even like when we talk, because quite often, you know, we use the terms food, forest and forest garden interchangeably. Um, but actually I like the term forest gardening because some forest gardens that I design are not focusing on food. So some of them focus on medicine, so medicinal plants, some focus on craft plants, such as dye plants or things like that. So um I always say, like right at the beginning of the design process, like think about what you actually want to focus on. You know, do you want to create a garden that's full of herbs so that you can drink herbal tea every day? You know, maybe you've got, you know, I've I've been through a year of really you um doing a deep dive into using herbal teas to help um heal some chronic illnesses that I've had. And it that's been amazing for me. Uh like the the power of a herbal tea, I just never realized before. I've always drunk herbal tea, you know, every now and again because it tastes nice, but to actually use it as medicine to heal myself has been amazing. So I'm now putting a lot more herbs into my forest garden so that I can have herbal teas every day. So, you know, are you looking for a garden that's um going to be a healing garden? Are you looking for a garden that's going to provide you with loads of food? Are you looking for a garden that you can grow willow for basket making or, you know, so actually think about some of the, you know, what do you really want from your garden first? If it's going to be productive, what do you want it to be producing? Um and so within I had so much fun designing all these different theme designs. So I've got a first aid kit garden um where I learnt about things like yarrow. Um that it's one of its common names is carpenter's weed. And that's because if you cut yourself, um, you can actually put yarrow on your cut and it will stop the bleeding really quickly, which I didn't realise before. So um, so yeah, just learning all these different uses of plants. So I did one which was a first aid kit, then I did a craft garden and a Like a jam guild. So I created a whole tree guild just around plants that are amazing for jam. So putting in like plums and Japanese wine berries and strawberries and rhubarb and things like that. So I think like the first step is really to think about what you want the most from your garden. Um, and then just really simple things like once you've worked out what plants you want, then working out where they're going to go in your garden in terms of shade and you know, uh plants that like shade can go nearer the trees, plants that like sun need to be a bit further away. And I know that sounds really obvious, but and I've done this myself, where you see something in a garden centre and you just think, Oh, I really, I really want that plant, and you buy it, even though you know really that you don't have anywhere that is that actually your garden is full shade and you know this plant needs full sun. And I I have done it myself, so um, I totally understand that feeling, but um, I think just uh making sure that the plants that you're gonna put in are definitely going to grow in your garden. Um and then I think another design consideration is we talk about food forests, and so people are always focused on the trees, as if the trees have to be, we have to put in as many trees as we can fit in because it's a it's got the word forest in it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But for me, it's all about maximising what you can fit in the layers and um getting the most that you can out of your garden. So if you've got a relatively small garden and you put in three or four fruit trees, you've pretty much shaded out the entire understory layer. Um, and then that massively reduces what you can grow underneath. So actually, in a small food forest, quite often I'll just put one tree and really maximise what I can fit in terms of the herbaceous layer with perennial vegetables and kales and um herbs and things like perennial onions because they're the ones that I use the most for cooking. You know, yeah, it's great to have a whole load of apples, but actually, you know, there's quite a few people around who I know who have apple trees and they're constantly giving away apples at that time of year, you know, that actually I probably wouldn't even need an apple tree in my garden, and I could be self-sufficient in apples just from what everyone else is giving away. So I always say that yes, it's called forest gardening, but it doesn't mean that we have to squeeze in as many trees as possible, you know, really think about the understory.
SPEAKER_00:That's good because yeah, as you say, the name suggests forest, which is a lot of trees.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, but if you were again talking about a small garden concept and you you put in your three or four fruit trees, as you said, then that's it. You can't really grow much else.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:But by doing one tree, you can add your herbaceous layer, your perennial veg, your herbs, all of that into the next layer. So that that's giving you more versatility in what you're what you're able to take from the from the from the space then.
SPEAKER_01:And even some of the larger scale designs that I've worked on. I've been um working on uh a really exciting project for the National Trust. So there's a uh National Trust's first forest garden is going to be opening in 2026 at Sugborough in Staffordshire. It's really been a really exciting project to work on. And even there, you know, and and that's quite a large garden, you have you know, you have to be really careful again, not to just put just fill it with trees so so that there's no understory. Because uh in fact, Robin Robert Hart, who was you know one of the pioneers of forest gardening in in the UK, you know, his garden, he actually admitted himself that he'd planted too many trees and that the tree canopies all closed in on each other and and a lot of the understories died off. So it is actually one of the most common mistakes on any scale of forest gardening is putting in too many trees. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:In terms of so you mentioned your your your tree and then your your understory of you know, perennial veg, herbs, smaller fruit bushes, and so on. What do you use then? So obviously there's there's beauty in in elements of that. You know, you have your your your your fruit trees with the lovely flower at certain times of the year, you have autumn colour, you have some veg that can, you know, veg and herbs that can give you uh beauty as well as as function. But ornamental plants that are just giving you that aesthetic, uh maybe helping with pollination, what plants are you adding into the mix there for for that?
SPEAKER_01:Well, when I'm choosing plants, I will try and choose plants that have a function and a yield but are also beautiful. So I say things like yarrow, you can still use a lot of the um cultivated varieties uh as medicinally as well. So some of the lovely um I've got one called pastels mix, so it's all different shades of whites and pinks and things like that. And then for like plants for pollinators, I know it's quite a common one that's used a lot, but just geranium rosanne flowers for what, six months? You know, it just flowers for ages. And actually, when I was doing the research for my pollinators garden design within my book, um, geranium rosanne was actually one of the top plants for wildlife because it flowers for such a long time that insects can rely on it being a plant that they can come back to time and time again. So they know where it is, they know that they can come back and feed from that plant for you know months and months and months, even if there's not much else flowering at the time. So that actually came out as one of the top wildlife plants, and it's just such a, you know, it's I love the colour of it as well. And when you were talking about sort of starting to pair plants together, so there's a perennial kale called Taunton Dean kale, and it's one of my absolute favourite plants. It's so tough. Like the leaves are just um, they're so much more um resistant to sort of attacks from caterpillars because the the leaves are much uh sort of tougher and more robust than some of the annual kales. But when you cook it, it's just like melting the mouth, so it's not like chewy and fibrous like kale can sometimes be. But it's got the most beautiful purple petiole, so like the midrib down the leaf is just this beautiful purple colour, and so I can then pair it with things like geranium rosanne, which when you grow them together, it really brings out the you know, the purples, and then I might put in there something like an aqualegia for a purple aqualegia as well for a bit of um colour earlier on in the spring, and then things like the for a ground cover to suppress weeds. I use um Siberian bell flower, so the Campanula postrascayana, I never know quite how you pronounce that, but um it's got purple flowers, but you can eat the leaves and the flowers, and because it's evergreen, you know, you can be picking them as salad leaves through the winter as well. So it's just sort of the same way that you would design a garden ornamentally, you would be choosing a colour palette, and then you would be thinking about how to put those colours together, and then also thinking about that seasonal interest. So a lot of people, when they talk about forest gardening, you know, you're concentrating on the layers, on the stacking, and um and not necessarily thinking, well, actually, maybe it'd be good to have some snow drops for some pollinators in the spring, and um, you know, and then having some plants all year round and having mahnia um for winter pollinators as well, and actually stacking the kind of colours and interest and um plants for pollinators as well through the year is just as important for me. So that's one of the things that I do for every single design is try and get a plant that is flowering every month of the year in every garden that I do.
SPEAKER_00:Um that's a nice concept. So yeah, and it's possible, of course, to have yeah, to have plants, yeah, and then you're having you're having interest across all seasons. You're having and when it comes to you know having because sometimes if your forest garden it can look, you know, if you haven't put the right planning process into it, it can it can be a forest that is productive in certain months, but by way of beauty, there's a lot of months where it's just trees.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, yeah, and I think there's so many forest gardens um and where you you look in the middle of summer and it's just a mass of green, you know, like you can't pick anything out because everything's just green leaves, you know, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with that, but just adding in a bit of interest, so instead of having a normal elder, you know, have a black-leaved elder just to make that pop out a bit more, or purple-leaved hazel, or you know, just thinking about um choosing elements that are a bit more interesting. I have to say that before I got into um food forests design, I'd never really been a big fan of variegated leaves. I always just found them a bit, you know, just wasn't my thing at all. Whereas the more I got into forest gardening, I was actually like, wow, a variegated leaf just to add something a bit different that's not just another green leaf. So there's a lovely kale called um Dorbenton's Panache, and it's got like a lovely um kind of creamy yellow margin around the outside edge of the leaf. And and in a forest garden, it just really like stands out just for having this extra, you know, white margin around the leaves that really makes it stand out, particularly in shady corners. So um, yeah, so I've now embraced variegated.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, funny. Uh now that you mention it, variegated leaves generally is something that I don't like either. I I I always think they are look artificial, um, which obviously they're not, but I just find some of them are so yeah, they just look really plasticky to me.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So I don't love them either. But um, I'm delighted you've mentioned so here in Ireland we we don't have, I know you have some brilliant nurseries over there that produce perennial vegetables. Um and here in Ireland we don't have so many, and they're not that common. But recently I have found and we used to be able to get plants across from from you guys, but that's no longer the case. But recently I found uh a supplier of some of these perennial veg, and only a month ago I got root cuttings of the Taunton Dean that you mentioned, and also the variegated uh and the green uh Daubenton, is it?
SPEAKER_01:Daubenton, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So I got both of those. Uh I've got some Welch onions. Um didn't get the walking onions.
SPEAKER_02:Uh uh Oh yes.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know. I'm not loving the idea of those. Um somebody told me they don't taste that great and you don't get much of a of a crop.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So I didn't bother with those. What else did I get? Um I know I got six different perennial veg anyway, so I'm looking forward to getting going with those.
SPEAKER_01:Right, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So uh they'll they'll be added in at some point. Um in terms of the book then, give us a so you mentioned is it broken up into the function first? So there's it like a design for the first aid garden, there's a design for the jam garden, I think you mentioned.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, yeah. So the the way that I wrote it was that if you want to create your own planting plan, if you want to do your own from scratch, then you can follow the book step by step. The first um few chapters are all about the design process, how to choose your how to assess your site, how to choose your plants to make sure they fit your site, and then how to um put those together to create a design. So that's the first part of the book. But I know, and and I try and equate this to my own hobbies because sometimes I think when you've been doing something a long time, it's hard to remember that not everybody feels as confident as you do about doing something. Um, so I try and equate it to um sewing. So I love sewing, I love creating my own clothes. Um, but I have to use a pattern that somebody's already made. Like the idea of having to just take a piece of fabric, work out what shapes I'm meant to cut out, and then turn them into a garment that works, just fills me with fear. Like I just don't think I could do that. So I have a pattern to follow. And so I I thought that actually what would be really helpful would be to have different designs, not necessarily that people take like directly out of the book and put in their own gardens, because you know, permaculture is all about um designing for your specific site, designing for your needs. Every garden's different, every person's different. Um, so it, you know, some people might choose to take the exact design out of the book and put it in their garden and tweak it over time, you know, to work out what works. But the idea was to have these designs as inspiration so that if someone is just feeling really stuck and they've no idea what to do, then they could look through these 12 designs. And like there's one that's for a shade garden. So it's for if you've got a really shady garden, here's all these plants that will grow that are edible and pollinator plants and things like that. That you could have a look within the book and get inspiration. So there's 12 designs, and in within that, I've included a plant list um of all the plants that are in the garden and a planting plan. And some of them I've done an illustration as well of a kind of artistic impression of what it might look like. Um, so that that was the idea of the book was to make it a really practical and useful book so that um it just gives lots of ideas, but also, you know, it might be within a big, bigger design that actually you just like a combination of maybe five or six plants from within one of the designs. So you decide to take that grouping and try it in your own garden. But throughout the whole book, it's really like beginner-friendly as well. So I wanted it to be for people who maybe they haven't, you know, heard that much about forest gardening or permaculture before. Not all of them are forest gardens, they don't all have trees and shrubs in. Um, but obviously, because that's my big passion, then there is a lot of that in there. Um, but you know, that that it's all about experimenting, like even as professionals, and this is true of any garden design, you never know what's going to do well until it gets planted in the garden. You know, you can have chosen a plant that ticks all the boxes for it should like that situation and it should like the other plants that are around it, and for whatever reason it dies. And, you know, that's just because until you put some things in a garden together, you just have no idea really how they're going to interact. So I wanted it to that, you know, I stress throughout the whole book that it's all about trying things out, experimenting, and not seeing things dying as a failure, but just seeing them as part of the learning process of what likes to grow in my garden. So um that's like a really important part of it.
SPEAKER_00:Sounds brilliant. Um, just in relation to something that always strikes me, and I know there it depends on the scale and so on. So let's say forest gardening on it on a bigger scale, people the understory particularly is just allowed to grow. So the plants that are there have to be able to, you know, fight their own corner against the other plants that are there, including what people would refer to as weeds. And you know, that makes sense on on that scale. But when you core it down into smaller gardens, you how do you uh make sure that these plants that you put in there are able to establish themselves in the garden initially, you know, over that first little while?
SPEAKER_01:Um well I think it it's it's the same really as if you were planting an ornamental border, really. So you make sure that everything you put in has the right kind of spacing, you know, to allow it to grow and to thrive. And you have to keep out the weeds or plants that you don't want. Um, you have to keep minimise those as much as possible until everything's established. And so really it is about not trying to just cram so much in because you really want to grow as much as possible, but accepting that rather than having like two plants competing with each other, so neither of them are doing well, actually working out which one do you really want and giving that enough space to grow and to spread out. And so, you know, choosing um ground covers that can fill in the gaps to keep the weeds down, you know, that makes a big difference in terms of long-term looking after something. But I think just observation as well, you know, permaculture design and permaculture maintenance is all about observation. So if you observe that the ground cover that you've chosen is just too vigorous and keeps swamping out all the things that are meant to be growing in there, um, which can happen sometimes with um, you know, alpine strawberries great, but if you try and put that in a herb garden where you're growing thyme, you know, those two are just not going to work together. So just to observe things, and if you observe that one thing is just going too rampant, then you just know that every year you've got to lift it, divide it, and just plant a small bit back again, you know. So it's in a smaller garden, you can do more intensive forest gardening. So obviously the ideal is that you do absolutely minimal of anything, but because you've only got a small space, whereas in a larger space, you might be able to allow your mint to take over, you know, five square meters. If you've only got five square meters in your garden, you don't want that to happen. So you can, you know, you you interact with it a bit more um than you would on a large scale, and that's fine.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Um to sort of change directions a little bit, your YouTube channel is is all about education as well. Uh I didn't realise you ran courses uh until you started talking about them, but maybe tell us a little bit about the the YouTube channel and you know what what happens there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, I think when when we looked at our previous property, so we went from five acres down to um a back garden. Uh I can't have I can't have like tours and groups and I can't run courses from home anymore. But I just really love sharing what I'm doing with other people because I just feel like I've learned so much on my permaculture and and food forest journey of learning that I just want to share that with other people who might be starting theirs and looking for more information. Um, and so I we I did have a previous YouTube channel, but to be honest, I barely ever put any videos out. And so I decided actually I was going to start a new channel and um and to actually try and really commit to doing it on a regular basis. And it is been really fun. I think I at the very beginning of my career, um, I'd really wanted to be an art teacher, and uh, that didn't work out because I didn't get on the teacher. Training course after my degree. And I think I just sort of thought, well, obviously, I'm, you know, that's not for me, or I would have got on the course. And it's taken me sort of 20 odd years to come back to the fact that actually I really do enjoy teaching. And that actually the best way to reach the widest number of people is on YouTube. So I could do a garden tour and maybe 100 people would turn up. And that was fantastic. You know, it's amazing to have an open day and have 100 people turn up. But if I can put a video out, you know, obviously some people make YouTube videos and are wanting a million views. You know, I'm not, that's not the scale that I'm aiming for. I I've done videos that on average have reached around a thousand people. And you know, you just think, well, that's amazing. That's you know, that's like having 10 open days, um, but I'm just doing one short video, and people from all over the world can watch it. Um, so that that's been really brilliant. And just to, as you said at the beginning, a lot of the focus of forest gardening is about people feeling like they need to buy a piece of land or have a small holding, or it's not for them. And I just really wanted to start this channel to show that you can do it in a really small space, you can do it in a normal sized garden.
SPEAKER_00:Um, because I think that is the that's definitely the biggest challenge. And I know from listeners' questions and and messages that people have when when we cover something like this, um we understand what you're saying about the zones and all this, but how do we bring that back into uh you know into a smaller space? And yeah, this is certainly the the area that you have honed in on, which which is great. Um you mentioned as well, which I didn't know that you've sort of recently enough started a podcast with your friend.
SPEAKER_01:Oh yes.
SPEAKER_00:So tell us a little bit about that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so uh my friend Zoe, it was actually I did mention that one of my other big passions is sewing. And Zoe does this amazing podcast all about sustainable sewing. Because I I don't just practice permaculture in gardening, I practice it in every area of my life. So I committed, must be 10 plus years ago, no, 15 plus years ago, not to buy any new clothes anymore. Um for I and I started that for a whole I started for 12 months, but it's gone on for years and years anyway. But she so she does does this podcast all about sustainable sewing. And I got in touch with her just to say, I've loved this podcast so much. Um, and I'd like to offer you like a garden consultation, just as I like a pay it forward to say thank you for you um making this podcast. And she got back in touch um and then we just started this conversation, and then one day she just said, I think we should start a podcast about gardening, um, because she's very much a beginner gardener, so she just got an allotment and doesn't really know what to do or or what to, you know, how to start. And she just said that she really would love to do a podcast, which is for people like you know, both Zoe and I um are busy parents, you know, we've got busy lives, and however much we want to grow our own food, we don't have very much time in which to do it or a huge garden. Um so we decided to start a podcast which was for yeah, busy people who don't have masses of time but really want to do a bit of food growing um of their own. And so it's you know, it's my whereas my YouTube is very much focused on small scale, home scale, forest gardening, um, the podcast is much more um about growing more. I mean, we do talk, which in fact our latest episode coming out um soon is all about perennial versus annual vegetables. So we definitely mix in some permaculture stuff and it's all very sustainable. Um, you know, that's a big focus about it. But it's much more about um things that are easy to grow and growing annuals, um, and just growing in small spaces and and in a way that is not very long-winded, you know, it's nothing complicated, it's just about having fun and enjoying trying to, you know, be a little bit self-sufficient.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah, that's after sort of uh tell us the name of the podcast.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, it's called Can I Dig It?
SPEAKER_00:Can I dig it? So uh yeah, keep an eye out for that one as well. Um, you're after sparking another question, which I was going to ask you earlier. You perennial veg versus versus annual veg. Um, and it's funny because when you were describing one of the kales there, you mentioned that you felt it tasted better than the annual kales that you can get. And previous guests of the podcast have said that they think the you know the annual veg is is better tasting than the perennial veg. Just and I I presume it's a personal choice how it's cooped, yeah. All those all those things. Um, but in general terms, because I am, as I say, getting perennial veg going at the moment, so I'm interested to know. Um perennial spinach, um, perennial kale, in your experience, you find it that it's as nice, if not nicer?
SPEAKER_01:I think there's definitely a large percentage of the leafy green perennial vegetables which are just bitter and tough. And you know, and I'm always honest about that. And in my book, I very much lean towards how to grow things that taste nice in a layered food forest way rather than how to grow really obscure vegetables that taste really horrible.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, and so yeah, things like good King Henry, they're okay, but they're not, I wouldn't say they're the tastiest thing. Um, if I'm wanting something to replace a spinach, I would rather go with um a Caucasian spinach. So that's a climbing perennial spinach called Hablitzia tamnoides. So I've never heard of it. Yeah, so that's that's a nicer one. And in terms of kale, I tend to eat the Taunton Dean. I think that's tastier than the Dorbentons, but other people may disagree. Um, and I find it as say it's it's still quite tender, even even though the leaves are quite thick. Um, and so I think that there is there's definitely a place for saying try things out before you buy them if you can. Like you say, it's really difficult sometimes to get hold of these things to plant in your garden, never mind to actually get a chance to taste them before you buy them. But there are definitely books where they sort of say, oh, here's this obscure, you know, perennial vegetable, it tastes delicious, and then you taste it, and actually it's really quite horrible. And and I did waste a lot of money at the beginning on things that just I just knew that I would never eat because they just weren't very tasty. And so I mean, even things like um Babington leeks, so I don't know if you've heard of those, so that's a perennial leek.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I have to check, but I think that's one of the veg that I did get. So I've got six perennial veg.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so it's it's not that it's not nice, but it doesn't taste really like a leek. It's much more kind of pungent and garlic flavoured than a leek. So we made a casserole one time um where we it would have it would have had leek in it, but instead we put in um this Babbington's leek and and in the quantities that we would put in a normal leek, and it was just such a strong flavour that um yeah, my kids couldn't even eat it because they were just like, oh no, it's too strong. So it is about relearning how to cook with certain things as well. So I mean, I would say with a kale, I just use that the same way I would annual kale. Um, but definitely some of the kind of more spinach type things or some of the onions. I I I really love the everlasting onion. So I don't know if that was one you managed to get hold of, but it's it grows a bit like um it bunches up a bit like a shallot wood, but it doesn't form a bulb like a shallot, it's much more like a spring onion.
SPEAKER_00:So is that that's the one that they call Welsh onion, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01:Uh no, there's Welsh onion and then there's this is more like a bunching onion.
SPEAKER_00:No, so I got the Welsh onion.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, the Welsh onion is also great, you know. I think Welsh onion's really good. And it's very similar to a Welsh onion, um, but it doesn't it it it doesn't it Welsh onion can have like quite a hollow stem, whereas uh the bunching onions are more like a spring onion. So it's more like growing large spring onions in bunches, um, and they're very tasty as well. But I think there's you know, when when I design and grow forest gardens, I try not to get too tied up in like novel and obscure and weird and wonderful things because I actually I want people to actually eat things, I want people to actually use their gardens and and to use the produce. So I think uh it's another thing. Sometimes you just don't know if you're gonna like something until you've grown it and tried it, you know, and particularly like I say, because it's not like you can pop to the shops and just buy some Babington leeks to try out for dinner, you know, just to see if you like them.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Um just on along the same theme. So we're all familiar with you know, the apples and the plums and and so on, that would create the the sort of tree story within within a food forest. The the mid layer, which we're talking about, fruit bushes and so on, your go-to plants there?
SPEAKER_01:Um yeah, I suppose this depends what you like to eat. So I mostly put in things like um blackcurrants and red currants and um Japanese wine berries, um, things like that, because I really love fruit. We make a lot of fruit leather in our house. So I don't know if you've ever had fruit leather.
SPEAKER_02:No.
SPEAKER_01:Um it's where you make like a few a fruit puree. Um you can mix in sort of apples and all sorts of things, and then you spread it out in thin layers and dehydrate it so it becomes, I suppose they call it fruit leather, um, but it's yeah, it's just like dehydrated fruit. Um, and so we we make quite a lot of that with berries from the garden and we make jam and um things like that. So I quite often put um fruiting things in for the shrub layer, but I I would include kale as one of the shrub layer as well. And if you want to put in, like I've used Eliagnus in my shrub layer because it's really great for wildlife to have some evergreen, um, the the Eliagnus abingiae, to have some evergreen plants in there for wildlife as well. And then I just trim it with shears and let the bits of trimmings drop to the floor, and it just helps because it's nitrogen fixing, it helps to add fertility into the garden as well. So there's yeah, it depends if you want um what you're wanting most from your um shrub layer, really. If you want wanting more uh leaves, then you could put something like a salt bush in. So um then you can eat the leaves from that. But if you want to grow more fruit, then put in something here, like a gooseberry or a currant bush.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah, it's brilliant and great that you're honing in on that sort of niche of the smaller garden, which as I say, it's definitely it's definitely a gap that people haven't been filling up on to now. So really well that well done with that. Uh, as we mentioned, the two books are out. The latest one is permaculture planting designs. I presume it's available in all the usual places.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so it officially launches at the beginning of February, and it will be available um from yeah, most online booksellers. And also I am selling uh signed copies from my own website. Uh so I can send you the link for that. But I've got a stand store. I know they're a bit more common in America, but it's just like an online shop where uh I can sell signed copies.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, for sure. I'll put the link to your website in the show notes, but maybe just tell people it's I presume it's Pippa Chapman.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:So Pippachapman.com.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so it's no, it's it's just called um you can just uh look up Stan Store um Pippa Chapman Permaculture and it should come up, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Brilliant. And YouTube channel, um I'll put the link is in the show notes as well. Um, yeah, there's lots of lots of places and ways for people to sort of connect with your with your information, which is as I say, brilliant, and filling a niche that is without a doubt there. Uh I know from listeners and the questions that they have after we've covered forest gardening. Um brilliant information, but how do we scale that back?
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:So you're definitely you're definitely filling that niche. So uh really well done. It's been an interesting chat. Uh lots that we talked about. Um continued success with the book when it com when it comes out and with your with your business again. Sounds like a brilliant brilliant, a brilliant business where you're going around and you know maintaining and designing and I suppose keeping gardenings going in a in a permaculture way, which is certainly something that we don't see over here so much yet. Um so yeah, really well done and everything, and thank you very much for coming on, Master My Garden.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, thanks for inviting me on, it's been great.
SPEAKER_00:So that's been the this week's episode. A huge thanks to Pippa for coming on. Um as I mentioned, uh anytime we've covered permaculture or forest gardening before, the questions have come in afterwards around how to scale it back down. So that book certainly sounds like it will answer those questions, give you the plants to pair together, but also if you have a specific need or outcome that you want from the space or from the garden, those plants, you know, the the collections of plants, like a jam garden, like that's a brilliant idea. You know, we've all seen, you know, and we've talked about the pizza garden where you'd have plants that you would typically see on a pizza, but this is one for jam, one for inking clothes, uh fruit forest and so on. So there's loads of different ways of going at it, but as Pippa said, come at it firstly from what you want the outcome to be from the garden or what you want to what you want to you get from the garden, I guess, and then that's how you you make your you make your start. Um we're easing into 2026, so second episode of the year. Lots of new episodes coming up in the coming weeks, and we'll be getting back to our usual what to sew this month in a couple of weeks' time. But for now, that's been this week's episode. Thanks for listening, and until the next time, happy garden.