Community Food Forest & Garden

A food forest is a style of garden that takes inspiration from natural forest ecosystems, and uses the strategies and lessons that we learn from nature to grow food for people more efficiently, sustainably, and abundantly than traditional gardening.  Think of walking through a grove of fruit and nut trees, berry bushes, perennial vegetables, and flowers where almost everything you see is edible or medicinal!

The space was already in the forest! Before we moved into the building on Stark, the lot behind it was an overgrown woodland with towering trees, carpets of ivy, and thick blackberry brambles. This dense vegetation meant that there simply was not enough sunlight available across the site to grow the majority of annual produce. Instead of bulldozing everything and starting from scratch (not exactly cheap or environmentally friendly), we decided to work with nature instead of against it. We prioritized finding plants that still produced food even in partly sunny or shady conditions, and this eventually led us to the food forest concept.   There are many other benefits of food forests over traditional gardens, including being less labor intensive, higher yielding, using less water and fertilizer, reducing greenhouse gases, supporting pollinators, and being more resilient to weather conditions and climate change, but really it was a choice made out of necessity.

Hopefully, a lot! The food forest will serve our community as a reliable source of fresh, local produce for years and decades to come. Almost like a food pantry where you get to harvest your own food! We hope to offer other products from the land too, such as firewood, medicinal herbs, and plant starts.  In addition to the plants that we grow and maintain, there will also be raised garden beds for community members to grow their own food, as well as regular programming in the garden that will teach a wide range of gardening skills. The garden will also be a beautiful, quiet, cool, and relaxing space that community members can spend time in during open hours.