Why Canadian Cities are planting Food Forests - CBC article

This was on the front page of the CBC this morning - https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/what-on-earth-food-forests-1.5660211



There are several public forest gardens and food forests in our city, but they didn't make it into the news story.

Yay!

This makes me think about planting a food forest in my tiny town of 650+ souls.  Many here have their own gardens, but fruit trees and bushes would help out.  I noticed that the Food Pantry here has a few vegetables growing out front.  (They have very little space for planting.)  People drop off their excess produce but you do see a lot of giant zucchini.

I admit I cannot grow Bay, so about once a year I pop down to the local public food forest and grab a few leaves.  In return, I leave some seed, either in packets or scattered.  I'm grateful for the resource.  

Reading this story, I confess that I raised a sceptical, curmudgeonly eyebrow.

The idea is excellent, of course, and I applaud it. Planting food is better than golf courses.

But they make it sound like this is a hip new human invention. In fact, these prairie river/creek valleys have been natural food forests for 10,000 years. It's all there, as long as humans leave it alone.

But you don't hear about it on social media or the evening news. Wise old timers won't tell you where the best berry patch is, any more than they will tell you where the best fishing hole is. But it's out there. Take a walk and you'll see.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote: In fact, these prairie river/creek valleys have been natural food forests for 10,000 years. It's all there, as long as humans leave it alone.

Some researchers believe these natural food forests were managed by humans for thousands of years.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190521162443.htm

https://www.pastemagazine.com/science/superfoods/earthrxthe-amazon-is-not-a-wilderness-its-an-advan/

Good links. It's an interesting argument. Humans tend to modify the landscapes they live in.

Some of the species I was thinking of -- saskatoon, chockecherry, high bush cranberry, pin cherry, hazelnut -- are enthusiastically harvested and transported by birds and squirrels in my part of the world.

But humans harvested and stored these foods items too, and as they travelled they surely spread seeds. There may have been deliberate management; it's really hard to know.

This is becoming more and more important, not just for the food it represents, but for the cooling effect, trees, particularly groups of trees, have on a city. If we *need* to plant more city trees to protect lives during heat waves, why not make them mini-food forests?

Jay Angler wrote:This is becoming more and more important, not just for the food it represents, but for the cooling effect, trees, particularly groups of trees, have on a city. If we *need* to plant more city trees to protect lives during heat waves, why not make them mini-food forests?

There is no doubt about the value of urban trees for cooling. Though in my area the strong thunderstorms have been knocking them down all over the place, and in a city they always hit something expensive on the way down. I hope that's not the new normal.

But when it comes to urban food forests, permit me to point out some possible problems.

I want to believe. It's a good idea. It looks beautiful on paper. Except then you add actual urban humans to the mix, and the shine comes off.

The City of Saskatoon, Canada, recently spent $360,000 CAD to install a food forest. I don't know if that includes maintenance costs while it gets established. But it's a lot of money. Will all the citizens who pay for this also benefit from it? Maybe, but despite the hypotherical openness of the resouce to everybody, the practical fact on the ground is that possession is 9/10 of the law. My recent personal experience suggests that people are quicker to "take" than to "share."

A related example: when a local city installed a free water tap for homeless people in a tent city, it didn't take long for a local street gang to start charging "rent" for people to use it.

My 2c. I hope I'm wrong.

In my city, we have a successful non-profit getting funding to establish & maintain orchards & food forests with local people. The first food forest is more a copse, but it's 7 years old & getting reasonable local support.

There's a lot more work to be done on creating a culture & community of giving and sharing, however. It only needs one person to recognise what they see & start taking more than the plants can bear, to damage the garden.

"Healing of land MUST include healing of people and vice versa."

Ac Baker wrote:There's a lot more work to be done on creating a culture & community of giving and sharing, however. It only needs one person to recognise what they see & start taking more than the plants can bear, to damage the garden.

Yes! Somehow people need to collectively bond with the food forest and protect its health, rather than treating it like a grocery store. The mind shift is as important as the forest.

I worked in a locked institution.  It had a gardening group.  Gardening being “therapeutic”.

I thought I would plant melons, but someone who had been there longer said that in the past, it had been tried, fruit trees as well.  What happened was that nothing ever ripened because as soon as anything came close, someone would pick it.  The theory was that the residents feared that someone else would pick it first.

We actually wondered if planting food plants increased the anxiety levels in our resident population.

I wanted to try growing small things like cherry tomatoes and or strawberries, so that one premature harvest wouldn’t spoil the whole crop. So that it was possible to believe that there would be more….

I did plant strawberries and the plants did well.  However I observed a resident spitting into the strawberry bed.  When I said something to the man he scoffed, said if someone was going to eat something, he should wash it first.  So that was an opportunity to talk about shared resources and respect and so on.

My story is in support of the idea that any healing project has to include healing people.  

The setting was a maximum security facility for violent mentally ill.  So, yeah, the guys were a select population, but they carried and exemplified the culture they were a part of.  Lack of respect for others, an absence of feelings of compassion, empathy and connectedness to others are not even considered mental illness.  Having had those attributes would have prevented many of the crimes they had committed, but absent the violent crime, they represent the values of their communities.


I have theories and opinions on how to address the situation, but that would be cider press,  and I don’t go there.

That is a really interesting & thought-provoking experience.  Thank you for sharing.

There's a newish book called "On Repentence & Repair" which is a very interesting & readable place to start on this long process of healing our relationships with one another.

It's about practicing five widely recognised steps for conflict resolution:
1) naming and owning harm we've done;
2) beginning to change;
3) restitution and accepting consequences;
4) apologizing meaningfully; and
5) making different choices.

It doesn't expect people to be religious at all, btw!

As it happens, quite a lot of the work we're doing involves people with experience of being detained, both in mental health institutions as well as the criminal system.

There’s a subdivision in the region of Davis, California.  It was designed to direct rain runoff to water parks, and other permie type strategies.  Houses clustered, creating open space.  

The public parks have fruit trees.  I can’t remember the name of it right now, but I will be working on that🤣.  It was built long enough ago that the trees have matured.  Probably the first generation children have grown up and moved away, or bought their own place in the neighborhood.  It would be interesting to see what has happened, what has worked….

Anybody know what I am talking about?

Thekla McDaniels wrote:Anybody know what I am talking about?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_Homes ??

The small city closest to me (Duluth, MN) has been planting public "orchards" -- mostly just apple trees near trails and other facilities that already get used as far as I've seen. And there doesn't seem to be any abusive tragedy of the commons stuff happening so far. (Though I've only picked apples at three of the spots.)

https://duluthmn.gov/parks/natural-resources/edible-duluth/

Thank you! Christopher.

For giving the names of Village Homes, and Edible Duluth.

The thread is about “why Canadian Cities are planting food forests”, and I think it’s because it’s a good idea, and it can be done successfully.

If you follow the link to the Wikipedia article on Village homes, there’s a link in that article to a Geoff Lawton video of Village Homes.

And I am glad to know that it wasn’t just a flash in the plan.  Village Homes is about half a century old now.    And if other cities are looking to follow these same principles, appropriate to their situations, it must be catching on.

Isn't it interesting we are circling back to the way things used to be, is the age of rugged individualism over? The food forest is a bit of what I have in mind here on our farm. I am sharing space in my garden with friends so they are seeing first hand the value of soil care. At first glance you might say that is a dirty garden, but when you look closer there is a reason for all that exists there. Plant biodiversity is where it's at whether it be garden, agricultural land or other. For a number of years I would add the straw from my native seed cleaning to the garden and this is where I started seeing an improvement in yield and less insect pressure. I seeded oats this spring in the entire garden and that is part of the soil building for this season. I also let anything grow that wants to and just clip the annuals before they set viable seed. I am getting the benefit of a living root.

I have the idea of highlighting what used to be in this farm centric area. The soil is good and with proper steps can be very productive, I must prove this first on our farm. Building soil (raising SOM, soil organic matter) is not a quick process, at best according to most I have read is about 1/10 % per year SOM increase. This comports with my 33 year old restored prairie soil tests. We went from around 2% to 5% SOM in those 30 plus years. My area used to be a hub of local activity, all centered around the small farms, hard work and "sharing" that went on between the people. Can this type of culture be revived? Time will tell, I am going to do my part.

Christopher Weeks wrote:The small city closest to me (Duluth, MN) has been planting public "orchards" -- mostly just apple trees near trails and other facilities that already get used as far as I've seen. And there doesn't seem to be any abusive tragedy of the commons stuff happening so far.

That's good to hear. I think preventing "human problems" is as much a design issue as anything. Basically, concentrating the resource increases risk while spreading it out makes it less vulnerable.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote: That's good to hear. I think preventing "human problems" is as much a design issue as anything. Basically, concentrating the resource increases risk while spreading it out makes it less vulnerable.

Absolutely! And including some "protective elements," such a trailing black berries, which also at least provide fruit for the birds, will help. (They're very yummy if a human chances to get to a few before the birds!)

Hopefully, as more people have the experience of picking fruit from a tree, they will get the idea that they can do that even in a small garden. This book is excellent: https://permies.com/wiki/260271/Grow-Fruit-Tree-Ann-Ralph  Food forests may generally be looking at large fruit trees for many valid reasons, but I am learning that a small, well managed tree in an urban area with no deer pressure, could be a gateway drug gardening technique, worth encouraging. Get someone hooked with a tomato plant in a pot and see where it leads!

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:I think preventing "human problems" is as much a design issue as anything. Basically, concentrating the resource increases risk while spreading it out makes it less vulnerable.

Also planting young fruit trees in the middle of the bramble patch can give them protection against damage from all sorts of 2 and 4 legged creatures whilst they are getting established.