From Field to TROPICAL PARADISE in UK - Living My Dream

I'm Dan and I've always been massively passionate about the jungle, indigenous people and the skills they use to survive in the forest. In 2012 I gave up my career to go and live with some of the last traditional rainforest people and learn is it really possible to live as part of the ecosystem without destroying it. I've realised it wouldn't be viable or sustainable to keep travelling to the jungle so I decided to buy some land in my native home of England and plant my own jungle and to see what skills I'd learn would be transferable to our climate. I've spent a lot of time in the jungle over the years and each place I've been to is so different but they generally have certain things in common. For one the trees are evergreen and in the uninterrupted forest where there hasn't been much logging activity there's usually an emergent layer consisting of the tallest trees of the forest and then there's the canopy layer which consists of the medium to large broadleaf tree species. Then there's the understory layer which often consists of a whole array of palms, bamboo and other smaller trees and finally there's the forest floor which consists of smaller plants and things like ferns. The land I bought hadn't been touched for a couple of decades around an acre was native woodland the rest was impenetrable gores and bramble. In the early days it was important to me not to use petrol tools so I cleared the initial half an acre with just my jungle knife called a parang and all of the stumps I dug out with an old mattock I'd got from a boot sale. As the weeks went by I burnt the tops of the gores and the bramble to give me room to work and I kept all the stems as firewood. The first job once the area was cleared was to plant an evergreen hedge around its boundary. The soil was in good condition as it hadn't been disturbed for so long and had a good mulch of organic material covering it. I decided on a simple criteria for the plants and trees I would choose. They had to be evergreen meaning the leaves don't fall off in the winter and secondly have a tropical look or be useful either as a medicine, material or have edible parts. With that in mind I began my search to find winter hardy alternatives to the tropical plants of the jungle. So for that emergent layer of the forest, those biggest trees, I had to find an evergreen tree fast growing with a tropical appearance and for that I came across eucalyptus. The main variety I planted grows up to three meters a year. It's grown commercially for firewood and timber in many countries and not only that it looks almost identical to many of the trees I see when I'm walking in the jungle in Borneo. I started with 15 plug plants I bought. After that I purchased eucalyptus seed from Australia and grew more along with five other species. In the first year they grew about a meter and after that they grew up to three meters a year. I wanted the forest to have a really natural feel and not all the trees be evenly spaced like in a plantation. So I would get a bunch of stones, chuck them and plant the trees wherever they landed even if that was right next to each other and it felt so unnatural doing that but to get the natural look I knew that's what I would have to do to mimic how they would germinate in nature. One tree is often more dominant than the other one so it leads to the trees having a natural feel, some are thicker some are thinner in their reach to get up to the sunlight. It took around three seasons for the canopies on the eucalyptuses to close together and it was such an exciting time when I pruned off the lower branches and for the first time it felt like I was in a young forest. That then gave me space to plant more of the canopy layer which consists of evergreen magnolias, acacias, other eucalyptus species and many more. One of my favourites is the ball bay, an evergreen magnolia from lowland subtropical forests. I also began planting the understory layer around that same kind of time as well because most of those trees and shrubs are very shade tolerant. There's the windmill palm which is native to parts of China, India and Japan where it's used for thatching, timber, materials and parts of the tree's fruits are edible as well. This bad boy really is a true fan palm that can grow up to 20 meters tall and trees like the ki koka as it's known by the Maori in its native home of New Zealand who used it as food, fibre and medicine. The root, stem and the top are all edible and it's often called the cabbage palm because you can eat the very top stem like heart of palm and it tastes very slightly cabbagey. It was an important source of starch and sugar for many Maori communities and they also used its fibres to make rope, baskets, mats and also medicinal teas. One of my absolute favourite plants on the forest floor is this, the harikiki, another New Zealand native and a very sacred and important plant of the Maori people who actually preferred the use of this plant for its fibres to make baskets and mats over the cabbage palm we just saw. There's actually 80 plus species of the harikiki that they could identify and use for different purposes. I've planted tons of these because I definitely want to get into mat and basket weaving in the future but in the meantime they're a brilliant alternative to garden twine. It would obviously be crazy expensive to go out and buy all these plants mature in pots so naturally I found the cheapest ways I could of getting them. Early on a common place you could find me was the clearance sections of the local garden centres around here and often the plants were just sold at a fraction of the price and they were just unhealthy because they'd been kept in pots too long and once they'd get in the ground they would soon take off. And I mentioned earlier the first 15 eucalyptus I bought as plug plants, the rest of these I've grown from seed and seed is a really economical way of getting new plants because for a few pound I can grow 50 of these and also dividing plants like the harikiki is a great way of getting new plants. In fact I haven't bought a single one of these and I now have close to 50. I've been fortunate enough to work as a gardener for the last 10 years so I've had plenty of opportunities where people have let me divide bits of their plants, take cut-ins and also when I'm really lucky they wanted to get rid of a plant and they've let me take it. You often see plants like the false castor oil plant sold as house plants for a few pounds with multiple plants together in the same pot. They're fully hardy here and divide really easily. As I watch the forest flourish around me and new ecosystems develop the insects and wild animals take advantage of new food sources and seek refuge just as naturally as they do in the surrounding forest. I realise that us humans with our power to both destroy and create aren't just a part of nature, we are nature. Guys thank you so much for watching. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel and like the video and drop me a comment down below in the comment section because I love to hear from you.