What exactly is a food forest/forest garden? The Beacon Food Forest, an important pioneer in the community food forest movement, defines it this way: “a land use system in which trees, shrubs and agricultural crops are interspersed. This creates a multi-story ecosystem that can mimic the self-sustaining functions of a natural forest while incorporating food plants for human consumption. The result is a semi-natural landscape that requires far less maintenance than row crops, provides habitat for pollinators, bugs and birds, and can sustain perennial as well as annual food plants.”
Why a community food forest? We want everyone to have access to fresh fruits and other edible plants, in spaces that are peaceful, beautiful, and ecologically healthy, providing benefits to human and non-human neighbors alike. A community food forest is located on land that is publicly accessible, with local community members the primary beneficiaries and the primary managers. We also hope for neighborhood food forests to act as starting points for other people’s own projects of transformation of their home spaces—whether that is home-scale forest gardens, vegetable plots, or converting grass lawn to pollinator-friendly habitat. The Food Forest Coalition of Chattanooga will work to bring people together in the pursuit of such transformations.
For more on the idea of the food forest, and our own vision for Chattanooga, explore the pages of this website, check out our blog posts, and consider joining us at one of our upcoming events- we hold work days and will soon begin giving talks and demonstrations as well. Sign up for our email list via the “Get in Touch” link above in order to stay in the loop of what’s going on (and going into the ground!). This is a cooperative endeavor, and we welcome more neighbors joining in this work and growing with us!
Together we are building community food forests, community orchards, and community garden spaces across urban Chattanooga. We are working to transform, one neighborhood at a time, our relationship with food, urban ecosystems, and one another, growing towards a healthier, greener, and more beautiful city for all.
The Food Forest Coalition of Chattanooga began as an idea in the summer of 2023, and has since grown into a group of people committed to realizing a vision of community foods forests- also known as forest gardens- across our city and surrounding metro area. As of the spring of 2024 we have five participating sites at which work is beginning, in the St. Elmo, Cedar Hill, Clifton Hills, and Piney Woods neighborhoods, working with multiple partners. While we hope to make first harvests at these sites in the summer of 2024 and more after, our long-term goal is to see community-owned and supported forest gardens in as many neighborhoods as possible, while also encouraging home owners, renters, and other organizations to pursue more productive and ecologically sound forms of land use, with our forest garden sites as inspiration and incubators for further growth.
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“When people work the land, they benefit from the healthy physical practice of gardening and farming… When people gather to garden, the world’s pressures and constraints go by the wayside and we breathe easily and eat proudly the fruits of our own labors.”