Community Food Forests are good for both food security and bringing people together. With minimal maintenance, why not start one in your own neighbourhood?
Can you imagine going to the park with your kids to play and coming home with a basketful of freshly picked berries, peaches, and herbs as a bonus? This could be you if you live near a community Food Forest, which is becoming increasingly possible, as over the last few years, more North Americans have been installing them. A Food Forest can provide free food for locals, build community through shared stewardship, increase food security and food literacy skills, and provide sustenance and habitat for pollinators and wildlife. If you can’t find a community Food Forest near you, consider getting together with some like-minded people and starting one.
A Food Forest is sometimes called a Forest Garden. They mimic a forest structure by having seven layers from the root zone to the overstory (the layer of trees growing more than 9 metres [30 feet], providing beneficial shade for smaller plants). They can grow a cornucopia of food including mushrooms, herbs, perennial vegetables, nuts, fruits, and even medicinal plants. Once established, they require minimal human intervention as they are designed to be regenerative and self-sustaining. From small urban environments and suburban backyards to large acreages or farms, food forests can thrive in many different contexts and on different scales. A community food forest is located in a shared public space, and can be tended by various people.
There are hundreds of community food forests across the United States and Canada, including:
- Beacon Hill, Seattle WA
- Cowichan Green, Duncan BC
- 8 different parks in Red Deer AB! (Twin Spruce, Oriole, and Timberlands to name a few)
- Fargo Forest Garden, Portland OR
- Muskeg Lake, Cree Nation in Saskatchewan
A food forest can be an amazing addition to a neighbourhood, but there are important considerations to ensure success. Consider this profile of a medium-sized food forest in London, Ontario, Canada that began planning seven years ago.
West Lion’s Park Community Food Forest
West Lion’s Park is centrally located in London, Ontario with an arena, baseball diamond, soccer field, and kids’ play structures. The city has a process for divesting grant money to each of its wards through a Neighbourhood Decision Making program. One community member put forward the idea of a public food forest, which got enough votes from citizens to receive $5,000 in seed money in 2017. Grants and some additional city funding were received in subsequent years. The half-acre site was then gradually planted in two phases.
Social Design
Taking time and effort to build the social side of the project is the most crucial aspect. Without a strong base of support, the project will not succeed. Of the four public food forests I have designed, three have very strong stewardship and are thriving and active. One has had a defunct steering committee for several years due, in part, to a lack of time and effort at the beginning to build that strong local support base. Community engagement with direct neighbours of West Lion’s Park, along with a faith-based support group called Sanctuary London and an adjacent school began as soon as the idea for the West Lion’s Gleaning Forest was birthed. Once the funding was announced, input was received from stakeholders into the types of foods that were desirable, and Wild Craft Permaculture was hired to complete a design plan. Plants included in the design were chosen to provide food from early in the growing season until late in the fall, and to provide a variety of fruits and nuts for people to harvest as they pass through the park. There are the usual pears, apples, peaches, plums and cherries, but also more unusual fruits like paw paw, medlar, persimmon, sea buckthorn, and nuts like hican (a hickory pecan cross) and hazel. Open spaces between trees and shrubs were planted with tenacious herbs and native flowers that would fill in tightly to keep grass and weeds out. These are all multi-purpose as they are also edible, medicinal, or play a role in supporting nearby plants by improving the soil, attracting pollinators, or repelling pests. While these perennial ground covers were still being established, annual harvests like squash and sunflower were planted in open spaces.
Prominent permaculturalist Dave Jacke—who wrote the two-volume Edible Forest Gardens—cautions that “It is far easier to plant a forest garden than it is to continually care for it and guide its development over the long haul.” While we still have a lot to learn about plant interactions in these systems, it is designing the people systems that is truly the most difficult part. I recommend spending at least twice as much time building community support, establishing a good stewardship committee, and securing long-term funding, as you do worrying about what to plant. Funding for a professional permaculture designer should be secured—preferably one with experience in food forest design. Many plants can be obtained through in-kind donations; be careful, however, not to just accept everything offered. It is important to carefully choose species and cultivars (varieties) that will work well together. All plant donations should be vetted by the designer.
A well-designed food forest will be fairly self-sufficient. It will certainly take a lot less tending than a vegetable garden, but it requires a crucial initial investment in the first two to four years to help the plants establish themselves, put down good root systems, and find their equilibrium amongst the other plants they live alongside. There is also a certain aesthetic expected in most public parks that will mean a little more tending than you could get away with in a more wild or private setting. Signage goes a long way toward helping the public understand what’s happening, inviting them to participate, and sharing knowledge about the plants in your food forest. There are ancient food forests on the northwest coast of North America that remain productive even now, after 150 years of forced abandonment due to colonization.
From the beginning, Sanctuary London has been stewarding the West Lion’s Gleaning Food Forest with weekly volunteer sessions on site. They take care of weeding and watering, and harvest food for their free meal programs. Planting days see many additional volunteers come out, along with annual pruning and holistic fruit tree care workshops to help volunteers maintain the forest. An additional half-acre adjacent to the food forest has been turned into annual garden beds that include plots for individuals as well as for the soup kitchen at Sanctuary. The school nearby helped with the initial food forest planting and uses it for their grade six study of biodiversity, pollination, and growth patterns.
It’s a joy to pass through the West Lion’s Food Forest at different times of the year to see what’s growing. Children and adults come together to delight in picking berries and guessing what herbs they are smelling as they walk through the ground cover. Berries and herbs have been in abundance since the first year of planting. Larger fruits are coming into production, and the nut trees will start to produce in the next few years. A food forest does not reap rewards as quickly as an annual garden, but once established it will provide an abundance of food for decades with very few hours spent tending to it. A community food forest is a long-term investment in our collective food security, not only because it provides food for neighbours, but also because it teaches them the skills they need to grow their own food, no matter where they end up. And, as much as food is an important product, so is the strengthening of communities to work together for a common good.
