Nelly W wrote:

....
Sorry so verbose.

haha! no problem with me. i'd rather read a long description
that gives enough details than not enough.

if you are looking to encourage wild life look into
some fruit and nut trees. oaks for sure.

on the bigger scheme of things i would always go for
diversity and encouraging it further.

if you want to do a food forest that can be a lot of
fun. at first you start with the nitrogen fixers and
can plant veggies in between until the trees get bigger
and cast too much shade. once you have some shade then
you can go for a mixed planting of other trees like
removing or cutting back every other nitrogen fixer
tree and replacing with selected fruit and nut trees.

bush cherries if you can find any that will work in
your area.

bush blueberries are always good food for human and
others. depends upon how high up you are if it is
cool enough long enough to make it worth it.

cider apples, or just random scattered apple seeds
which some may be interesting or not, but animals will
like the fruits in the late summer and fall, besides
you might like some hard cider.

for the super long term keeping some area covered
enough to grow some dense hearted long lived trees for
superb musical and furniture woods. things you would
not see in your lifetime, but eventually someone would
benefit.

do not burn any of the trimmings or stumps, they
make good habitat and fodder for the animals and bugs
and of course fungi.

wish i had enough area to do likewise...


songbird