Growing Edible Forests as a Community
by Catherine Bukowski

Communities across the United States are establishing food forests, also known as forest gardens, to ecologically grow perennial and annual foods, herbs and medicinals for free public harvesting.

Community food forests serve multiple educational roles such as introducing people to alternative agriculture, forest ecology, food security issues, social justice, and food literacy. They are also a great way for people to take an active role in shaping their local landscape and expressing values about how food is grown and who has access to it.

In 1997, Asheville, NC was the first city to give permission to a local non-profit organization to establish a community food forest on under-utilized Parks and Recreation property. The non-profit promoted public participation in shaping the project from the very start. Public meetings created a space for community members to give input on layout, design, and species selection for the food forest. Eighteen years later the food forest now looks like a small urban park and is known as the Dr. George Washington Carver Edible Park. Yet the trees and vegetation in the park provide much more than a shady, tranquil location to relax and recreate. There are apples, pears, jujubes, peaches, plums, figs, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, hardy kiwis and muscadine grapes among others species that are available to the public to harvest for free. Surprisingly, an idea that sounds so appealing took more than ten years before more community food forests started appearing in cities.

Community Food Forests
Collaboratively growing & harvesting food in forest-like ecosystems

About: My research is dedicated to profiling community food forests across the United States to better understand the successes and challenges in the management of both the vegetative and social components. I use the Community Capitals Framework as a lens to view how community assets are used to develop them as well as these stocks (human, social, cultural, environmental, economic, political and built) are transformed, re-invested or created through the processes of a site. My hope is that the research will lead to best practices for future initiatives in this emerging trend in resilient communities. I will try to keep the website updated periodically until then with interesting information pertaining to community food forests and related topics.