Food Forests Are the New Veg Gardens

So, you’ve graduated from a pot of herbs on the sill to a backyard plot of heirloom tomatoes, multi-hued peppers, zucchini (so much zucchini!) and pudgy little cukes. Maybe you’ve even ventured into potatoes and asparagus. Ready yet for next-level agronomy? I’ve got you covered.

First let’s back up a bit. Forests are home to the majority of species on earth. Preservation of forests is thus critical to the protection and restoration of biodiversity, which is in turn central to sustaining the ecosystem services that keep us humans comfortable, healthy and, well…alive.

Unfortunately, agriculture – another thing that keeps us alive – is a major threat to forests. Worldwide, more than half of forest loss is due to conversion of forests into cropland (livestock grazing is responsible for another 40 percent). The land here in the Eastern side of the U.S. wants to be a forest. That’s what it was before Europeans arrived, and what it would return to if we left it alone for a few decades. That rarely happens, though; mostly we just cut down more trees. Meanwhile, our local wildlife and ecosystems depend on those ever-shrinking forests. 

Which brings us to the underlying point: as our biodiversity crisis deepens, and as arable land becomes ever more scarce, we need to find ways to make the production of our food more compatible with the preservation of our forests.

Enter food forests.

Entrance to Forested in Bowie, MD.

Food forests are biodiverse, edible landscapes anchored by fruit- and nut-bearing trees and shrubs. They tend to emphasize native plants, but non-natives that can be cooperative and productive in this setting are also welcome. You may be familiar with the term “permaculture,” which is an approach to agriculture stressing diversity, stability and the resilience of natural ecosystems. Food forests are a type of permaculture.

My introduction to this concept has been through Forested, a ten year-old research and demonstration garden set on ten acres in suburban Bowie, MD. Founder Lincoln Smith is the visionary behind the project. Forested’s goal is to show that forests are not only compatible with agriculture, but capable of producing as many calories per acre as a field of wheat. In other words, feeding ourselves doesn’t have to come at the expense of the environment.

The children of a Forested staff member were my charming and spirited guides to the garden on a recent visit.

Among the dozens and dozens of edible foods grown at Forested are pecans, butternuts, persimmons, pawpaws, mulberries, ramps, sea kale, muscadine grapes, elderberries, ramps, plums, passionflowers, mushrooms and acorns. Nutrient-dense and plentiful in mature forests, acorns were a staple food of Native Americans. Somehow we’ve forgotten how to eat them, though. I haven’t tried it yet, but they can apparently be ground into meal or flour and used to make bread, porridge, pancakes, falafel and a whole cornucopia of other recipes.

A jubilee of cherries harvested from Forested’s lush understory.

Mulberries for the picking. They can be eaten fresh from the tree or made into juice, wine, tea, jam or dried fruit.

A ripening pear. Forested grafts edible and non-invasive pear species onto the trunks of inedible and invasive callery pear trees, solving two problems with one splice.

The payoff to Forested’s efforts can be found at places like DC’s Capital City Public Charter School and Hyattsville, MD’s Emerson Street Park, which are growing their own Smith-designed food forests. What I love about the Emerson Street project is that the setting – a pocket park in the corner of a block shared by residences and a few businesses – is completely unassuming and ordinary.

The view across Emerson Street Park to a neighboring business.

But it’s a living, breathing food forest! It grows blackberries, blueberries, apples, pears, strawberries, figs, currents and pomegranates – to name just a few of its crops. The Hyattsville city website advertises what’s in season. And best of all, the park is completely open to the public. Families are encouraged to harvest produce to bring home for dinner. Children are encouraged to gorge themselves on berries.

Blackberries at Emerson Street Park. I may or may not have picked all the ripe ones.

A future fig for a lucky Hyattsville resident.

A map of the produce section at Emerson Street Park.

All of this brings me back to my original point: if you’re into vegetable gardening, why not give food forestry a try? It can be as simple as adding a native plant that bears edible nuts, fruits or leaves (think oaks, serviceberries, pawpaws, spicebush, or native passionflower vines or strawberries, to name just a smattering) or, at the other extreme, installing a system of edible layers: canopy trees, understory trees, shrubs, herbaceous perennials, groundcovers, vines and roots. Either way, you'd be feeding yourself and the environment.

For more inspiration, visit a community food forest near you. This map, incomplete though it may be, shows where some are located across the U.S. If you live in the DMV area, check out one of the parks in Hyattsville or take a tour at Forested. Better yet, enjoy a forest-to-table dinner. Next one’s coming up on June 18!

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Resources

Whitney Pipkin, “How to Farm a Forest – and Feed a Neighborhood,” National Geographic, October 31, 2016.

 Michelle Winglee, “A Food Forested Revolution,” Edible DC, Fall 2017.