A food forest is a magical place. Though small in size, its effect on communities and cities is huge. It is a hub for communities to gather and sit in the cool shade in the summer. It beautifies neighborhoods, and as the name implies, provides free, healthy food for people to eat.
For Boston, Inside Climate News reports, food forests have been a way to revitalize low and middle-income neighborhoods. Thirteen food forests have already been created, and the goal is to expand to 30 by 2030, and the city has become proof that planting these small treasures really does work.
Different From a Community Garden
The nonprofit Boston Food Forest Coalition (BFFC), the force behind Boston’s food forest, was born out of a small community initiative to transform an empty lot in the city’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood into a food forest in 2010, reported The Christian Science Monitor.
Since then, the coalition has formally become a community land trust so that it can ensure that the lots and plots that make up the food forests permanently remain community spaces.
“I think what makes a food forest is truly the community owning the space and growing and transforming with those spaces,” Liz Luc Clowes, BFFC’s community engagement and food forest construction director, told The Christian Science Monitor.
While community gardens abound in many cities throughout the world. A food forest, however, is not a community garden, stressed Inside Climate News. Instead of being organized around raised beds that are cared for by individual members of a community, food forests take small lots and use them to mimic the ecosystems of native forest lands, with a focus on perennial and indigenous food-bearing trees and plants.
Myriads of Advantages
Food forests bring a myriad of advantages to the neighborhoods and communities they inhabit. From an ecological perspective, they filter out pollutants, such as nitrogen dioxide and others; they mitigate the urban heat island effect; and finally enhance biodiversity.
But more than that, they become places for communities to gather and thrive. According to a blog on Edible Boston, anyone can come and pick the food that is grown in the forests, so long as they only take what they need. In addition, especially in lower income neighborhoods, the verdant lots become safe spaces for children to play and for residents to sit and talk with their neighbors.
“There’s a lot of community building here. People are making friends. Children play, Carolyn McGee, a BFFC board member, and a neighborhood steward of the Ellington Food Forest told Edible Boston.
“They learn about strawberries and different herbs. It’s really a learning, working garden for the community. It’s such a beautiful space. It’s so calm and peaceful and so healing. It’s our space and we’re so proud of it.” This is the true heart of every food forest.
