The 7 Layers

It’s early March and as you begin to spend more time outdoors, the mind naturally begins to drift to the coming Spring. Encourage that as this is the time to plan this year’s garden and to begin gathering the supplies you’ll need to give your botanical friends that best possible chance to thrive. This time, while you’re planning and drawing up ideas, make sure to keep in mind the natural world and how she ensures that she is soaking up all of the possibilities with the 7 layers of growth. This month we will discuss this concept a bit so you can gather ideas on how to incorporate all 7 layers into your design as well. That will give you the best chance of having true success and seeing the real possibilities of nature’s full bounty!

So……what are the 7 layers? The canopy, the understory, shrubs, herbaceous plants, ground cover, roots, and vines. These 7 types of plants combine to harvest as much as possible from any given place. Even if you are using raised bed gardens, you can still apply this to your space. For many of us, we may omit the first two or perhaps even the third. That’s all up to you and how you want to plan out your gardens.

Very few people will truly include the canopy level trees directly into their gardens, but if you have a large enough space you easily could. Good options for these if you are going to plant a canopy tree are nut trees. They generally grow quite tall and then still provide an edible crop for you to harvest and enjoy. This layer will be harvesting the suns energy as high as possible while creating shade pockets below to create a diverse lighting environment. The roots will also drive deep into the soil, loosing compacted earth and allow nutrients to be mined from deep within the earth. Even if you aren’t going to plant a canopy tree yourself, take note of where the nearest trees are and see if you can utilize their shade in some way.

The next level is the understory trees. These small trees provide small pockets of shade as well and are better suited to thrive in a more variable set of lighting circumstances. They also help break up soil, and most of them are create at attracting songbirds and other small animals that may help keep your gardens system in balance. Fruit trees are most peoples’ go to trees for this purpose, but you could choose any number of smaller flowering trees as well. Even in a raised bed garden, you may have space to tuck one of these in the corner where you have unused path space or something like that. Try to think in new ways.

The shrub layer will form the backbone of the garden below and create a structure for the plant community. Blueberries, rosemary, and currants are great option, but if you really dig in, you’ll find that there are tons of options here and many of them provide delicious fruits or spices. These also bring in good insects and small animals galore and will go a long way to preparing your garden from the onslaught of pests that come to visit every year.

The next 2 layers will be comprised of most of the things that you are probably already growing. Most of our nutrient-dense veggies are herbaceous or root vegetables. Fill in your spaces with these to your hearts content. Don’t skimp on the roots though. These fit neatly into tight spaces and these are the plants that really break up the soil and allow nutrients below to be carried to the surface so they can be harvested by our other plants.

Ground cover is often forgotten in our gardens, but it is no less important than the rest. These are the plants that keep erosion from occurring and they also help keep and hold moisture in the soil for longer. This allows you to water far less frequently and let your plants slowly take in water evenly over a longer period, providing the ideal growing environment. There are tons of beautiful herbs to choose from including winter savory, creeping thyme, and St. John’s wort.

The final layer, the vines, are the most important thing in the garden, and the one that is most often either isolated or not included. Beans, beans, beans! These are your go to plants here as they are nitrogen fixing legumes. These will bring nitrogen from the atmosphere and fix it into the soil for all of the other plants. Aside from providing a staple crop for you to harvest throughout the season, they also creep into all of the unused space and harvest whatever bits of energy are left. The structure provided by the rest of the layers should also give them most of the structure they need to thrive. Make sure to let any and all unused parts of these plants compost into your garden so you are getting as much of the nutrient out of them as you can. If you are dead set on not growing legumes, berries are another good option. You may want to choose thornless varieties to save your hands and you will unfortunately not be getting the benefits of nitrogen fixing.

When you think about your garden this year, try to step away from the ideas of the past and think about things from a new perspective. Don’t clump all your plants together by their type, plant them all amongst one another, creating a natural community that is absorbing all of mother earth’s gifts. Your garden will be happier, perform better, and you’ll find its aesthetic appeal much more fulfilling as well. Let’s start getting ready cause Spring is just around the corner!