Birch Farms 150 acres
Updated: Aug 27
How do we grow food for our community and maintain biodiversity? Learning from Josh Sparkes and their 150 acres of organically managed land in Devon at Birch Farm has been greatly inspirational, with his motivation to inspire others and to learn how we grow food in nature and with nature, with techniques to support both people and wildlife.
Josh gave an information packed talk at the Wilding Gardens conference earlier this year in Manchester, where he shared their aim of growing an edible forest of over 300 plants of fruit, nuts and herbs with methods which include no chemical use, not disturbing the ground, and working with the existing landscape and plants.
Their growing goals aim to grow in polycultures, where no plant is grown in monocultures, this in turn provides root diversity and soil vitality. Just like humans – we thrive in diversity.
One interesting technique which many people struggle to understand is not remove roots from the ground, everything is left in the ground as this support soil health, unless a root is in the way of a new plant to be planted.
Their beds are all 1.2m across and plants are planted closer together than suggested in an approach called syntropic agriculture. They happily let the weeds grow and only prep the bed 2 weeks before it’s needed to be planted in.
I’m looking forward to the day we can organise a visit to Birch Farm as their goals, aspirations and motivations, deeply align with mine as a designer and what we do at our community garden, especially with their focus on perennial foods and plants for a changing climate.
The first Wilding Gardens conference took place at the University of Manchester in January 2026 in partnership with Crocus with world-leading experts in gardening, rewilding, design, horticulture, biodiversity and climate change examining how we can garden to save wildlife and resources, create resilience and combat climate change. Have a look back at the recordings from the event and information on their website:
Read more about Birch Farm: https://woolsery.com/thecollective/birch-farm/
There’s also an interesting read in the House & Garden website - https://www.houseandgarden.co.uk/article/joshua-sparkes-birch-farm
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From Bridgette and Pamela
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