How To Start a Food Forest In Ontario, Quebec, and Eastern Canada
Updated: Jul 30
The team at Plum Hollow Farms created this guide to help Canadian farmers, gardeners, and community organizations start and maintain a food forest garden on their land. Food forests are a regenerative approach to growing food that reduces the need for intensive labour while eliminating harmful chemicals and costly irrigation. We're on a journey with our forest farm zones, and this post is intended to share some of the lessons and tips we've picked up along the way.
Table of Contents
Quick Summary
A food forest garden is a permanent, layered growing system modeled on a natural forest, but designed to produce food.
Here is what this guide covers:
Follow your land's natural contours to build berms and swales that capture water where it falls rather than letting it run off.
Plant in three layers, with fruit and nut trees in the canopy, berries and herbs in the understory, and clover across the ground.
Choose stock rated a full zone colder than your official hardiness rating, because it is the extreme lows that kill trees, not the averages.
Build wind and critter protection before you plant, not after you lose your first saplings and seedlings.
Expect four or five years before the system starts carrying itself
The payoff is a growing area that produces fruit, nuts, and vegetables for decades on a fraction of the labour, water, and chemical input a tilled field demands, with soil that improves every season instead of degrading.
What a Food Forest Garden Actually Is
A food forest is a garden modeled on a natural forest, but designed to produce food. The land is landscaped by following its natural contours to build berms (mounds) and swales (ditches) that capture and direct water.
A food forest grows many crops in three vertical layers, which means the plants shade the soil, feed each other, and hold water where it falls:
Canopy: Fruit and nut trees
Understory: Berries, veggies, herbs, pollinators, nitrogen fixers, and dynamic accumulators like comfrey
Ground cover: Clover and cover crops that protect and enrich soil
The result is a self-fertilizing garden that needs less irrigation, weeding, and additives than traditional tilled fields.
The difference from conventional farming comes down to structure. A tilled field grows one crop in rows, which means bare soil, constant weeding, and inputs to replace what the crop takes out.
Which Plants Work in Ontario and Quebec Food Forests
Ontario, Quebec, and Eastern Canada get a shorter growing season than most food forest literature assumes, since much of it comes from warmer regions like the USA and the Niagara Region of Ontario. This does not rule out forest farming in these regions, it just changes the plant list.
Cold hardy fruit and nut trees rated for Zones 4A or 4B do well in Eastern Ontario, Quebec, and most Maritime provinces:
Fruit, nuts, and berries:
Apples (we love Cortland and Gala)
Pears
Plums
Chums
Plumcots
Sour Cherries
Raspberry
Blackberry
Haskap (Honeyberry)
Saskatoon Berry
Gooseberries
Elderberry
Hazelnut
Black Walnut
Veggies and herbs
Mint
Dill
Rhubarb
Squash
Potatoes
Basil
Horseradish
Nitrogen fixers:
White clover
Siberian pea shrub
Sea Buckthorn
Dynamic accumulators:
Comfrey
Yarrow
Dandelion
Understory:
Clover
Native wildflower mix
Note on plant hardiness zones
While official plant hardiness maps may suggest that your land is in Zone 5, for example, what we have learned is that the extremes are getting more extreme, making these maps less useful. For example, Plum Hollow Farms is officially in Zone 5b, and so planting peach trees rated for 5b should have been ok.
However, in the past two winters we have seen lows fall below minus 34 Celsius, and that was cold enough to kill off many fruit tress, including our peach trees.
Our recommendation is to use trees and berries rated for Zone 4B as a default for forest farm gardens in Eastern Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes.
All it takes is one day, or even just a few hours, at extreme low temperatures and suddenly your official plant hardiness zone is irrelevant.
GUIDE: HOW TO START A FOOD FOREST IN ONTARIO
Step One: Read Your Land Before You Dig
This step gets skipped constantly but it is 100% vital in determining the medium and long-term success of your food forest.
Tips for surveying land for food forest gardens:
Spend a Spring watching where water moves on your property. Note where it pools, where it runs, and where the ground stays dry.
Mark the natural contour lines with stakes in the Spring because everything you build afterward follows these lines.
Step Two: Build Your Swales & Berms
The water management component in forest farming matters more here than people expect. Spring melt and heavy summer storms deliver a lot of water in a short window, and swales let you hold that water on site instead of watching it run off.
Following the natural contours, build a nested series of berms with swales in between. The swale is a level ditch that catches water and lets it soak in rather than drain away.
The berm is the mound of soil beside it, built from the material you excavated PLUS hardwood logs, leaves and branches that support soil health as they rot (see tip about Hügelkultur below) and it becomes your primary planting bed.
At Plum Hollow Farms, this earthworks stage came first, before a single tree went in the ground. The berms were shaped to the existing slope so that water captured during spring melt stays within the growing zone through the drier months.
Why South East instead of South orientation for food forest gardens?
A southeast aspect catches morning sun to warm the soil early, then eases off in the hot afternoon, which reduces spring frost damage and heat stress compared to a full south face.
Tips for building food forest swales and berms:
Position mounds according to the contours. Use stakes!
Face mounds South East if possible (see below).
Important: Build up mounds using the principles of hügelkultur.
Step Three: Plant On Berms In Layers
Start with the canopy. Fruit and nut trees anchor the system and take the longest to establish, so they go in first. Space them generously, since a crowded canopy shades out everything below it.
Fill the middle with berry shrubs and larger vegetables. Then add ground cover and root crops below that.
Weave nitrogen fixers like clover and beans throughout, since they pull nitrogen from the air and add it back into the soil. Dynamic accumulators like comfrey pull nutrients up from deeper in the ground. Pollinator plants bring in the insects that make the fruit set.
Tips for planting in food forest mounds:
Ensure you have the right mix of pollinators.
Know your zone. Peaches rarely work outside Niagara Region.
Plant trees in 'doughnuts', adding stakes and trunk guards.
Plant trees with a root stimulant (like Myke).
Fill swales with mix of clover and native wildflower mix.
Contact local beekeepers to request hosting hives.🐝
Personal? Plant what you and your family actually like to eat.
Commercial? Fill gaps in supply. There are never enough local blackberries.
Plant with processing in mind. Products = margin.
Step Four: Protect From Wind and Critters
Young trees are vulnerable for the first few years, and in most of Ontario and Quebec the two biggest threats are wind and animals.
The biggest culprits:
Deer
Rabbits and Hares
Raccoons
Mice and Voles
Skunks
Bears
Windbreaks matter on open former farmland where there is nothing left to slow a prevailing wind. A row of fast-growing conifers or a hedgerow of native shrubs along the exposed edge protects young stock and reduces moisture loss across the whole system.
Critter protection is more immediate. Deer browse new growth, rabbits and voles girdle young trunks over winter, and both will kill a young tree outright. Tree guards on every trunk and fencing around the perimeter are worth doing before planting rather than after the first loss.
Tips for protecting food forests from critter damage:
Establish a perimeter of electrical fencing.
Plant a perimeter of spiky plants like Raspberry.
Add trunk guards to trees.
Get a dog.
Tips for protecting food forests from wind damage:
Stack hay bales as temporary wind breaks.
Plant a row of fast-growing trees like Black Locust.
Plant a hedgerow with fast-growing plants like dwarf arctic willow.
Step Five: Be Patient
A food forest is a slow system. The first two or three seasons are mostly establishment, with limited yield and more maintenance than you might expect while the ground cover fills in.
By year four or five the system starts carrying itself.
Weeding drops off as ground cover closes the gaps, irrigation drops off as the swales and soil organic matter do their job, and the trees begin producing fruit and nuts for decades to come.
Start Your Own Food Forest in Ontario or Quebec
Starting a food forest isn't just about growing food. It's about building soil, holding water, and creating something that gets better every year instead of worse.
You don't need acreage or expertise. You need a slope, a season of watching where the water goes, and the patience to plant for year five.
So why not start one?
Follow Our Food Forest Journey
The food forest zones at Plum Hollow Farms are a collaboration between our team and permaculture experts, and it sets the template for expanding more of these areas in the coming seasons. If you are planning something similar on your own property, get in touch.
We also share insights about food forests, trellis farming, permaculture, solar greenhouses, and pest management in our newsletter, Instagram and Facebook.
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