Food Forests

One of the biggest trends right now are food forests. Taking place. This comes from the New Hampshire Bulletin, that have studied food forests. Basically, these are edible parks, usually on vacant lots where they have large and small fruit trees. They've got vines, different plants that produce fruits, nuts, other edible products. And what I really love about this, and there's a bunch of them around, we've got it in Boston, we have it in Seattle, we have it in Atlanta. So a lot of these are coming up. In fact, they're saying that right now there's about 85 of these community food forests from the Pacific Northwest to the deep south. But what I love about this is it's really helping the people not only get food, it's helping the earth because they're taking vacant lots and they're having all these biodiverse crops on them, but also it's building society and it's a throwback to when a lot of us were growing up and your neighbor had raspberries, my parents had blueberries, and when they came in season, you traded. And it was much more of a community affair. And I think in today's world, with all the stress that we're having with all the issues that we have, having a food forest in my city, I would love that. 

Sally: Yes. I am hoping that we get one, one day here in Nashville. I love this. There's one that's amazing in Atlanta, and there's one in Seattle, and Boston has 30 planned, they've already built nine. So they're well on their way. Yes, these not only beautify our cities, but they are open to people to come and go from sun up to sundown. These are different from community gardens because community gardens generally require a membership of some sort, but this is open and they're also allowing the residents to volunteer and get involved and decide what is planted and take part in taking care of it. Another interesting thing about Boston and their plans to build 30 of these is that they did a study and found out that because of past redlining in communities of lower income and communities of color, they found that it was actually hotter in these areas of the city, that these forests, these food forests could provide shade and could cool off those areas better for those communities. So there are so many benefits to this. 

Phil: There are, and it just makes our population and our world a better place.