Garden City Harvest BY GENEVIEVE
This post, including photos and illustrations, are from Brook Artziniega who worked with us this summer. Before coming to us, Brook worked in film and podcasting production, most recently with the Peabody Award winning podcast, Threshold. This spring she completed her graduate work in the University of Montana’s Environmental Studies program.
Food forests are a relatively new addition to the mainstream edible landscaping conversation, but their cultivation is actually quite ancient. So, what are they?
âFood forests,â also called âforest gardensâ or âedible forests,â is shorthand for the practice of cultivating forest ecosystems for human food production. Sometimes this looks like leveraging an existing forest to slowly integrate edible plants, but increasingly, it is the practice of imitating forest-like structures to increase the biodiversity, efficiency, and sustainability of food production systems.
There are two key features of a food forest: plant layers and plant types.
