Food Forests: Novel ecosystems for the present day

Plus: Our annual report is out now!

April 12, 2025

Happy Nmebin-giizis (Sucker Moon)!

The fourth moon of Creation is Sucker Moon, when sucker goes to the Spirit World in order to receive cleansing techniques for this world.  When it returns to this realm, it purifies a path for the Spirits and cleanses all our water beings. During this time we can learn to become healed healers.

Upcoming Events

  • Come walk with us at Belle Island on April 24th at 4 pm, no sign-up required. We hope to see you there!

  • Hoping those cute little Song Sparrows, who've already arrived in Kingston, will nest in your yard? How about Hummingbirds, who arrive near the end of April? Or year round residents like Cardinals, Chickadees, Nuthatches, Goldfinches and Blue Jays? If you are, then you might be interested in learning how to birdscape your yard, and Joyce will be talking about just that from 6 - 7:30 on April 7th at the KFPL central branch! You can sign up here.

  • Are you fascinated about how water flows? Josh will also be participating in a talk on Rebuilding the Small Water Cycle on April 24th from 6:00 to 7:30 pm. It will be held at the Central Branch library, and you can sign up here.

Read our annual report

We’re excited to share our annual report from 2024, which we prepared for our AGM held earlier this month! Last year, we planted more than 2,600 trees across 3 Little Forests and 33 Pocket Forests - it’s amazing to see so many things come together and we’re so grateful for everyone who has collaborated with us to get here. You can read the annual report and watch our planting recap video on our website.

There are lots of organisations who we’ve worked with and who have supported us over the past year, but we’d like to give a special thanks to Green Communities Canada, the Beacon Design Collective, and Trees for Life for their financial support - we couldn’t have done it without you!

Re-story-ation with food forests

“As Gary Nabhan has written, we can’t meaningfully proceed with healing, with restoration, without re-story-ation. In other words, our relationship with land cannot heal until we hear its stories.”

– Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

Imagine the possibilities. Imagine Kingston in 2045, with Forage Forests, Food Forests, Hazelnut Hedgerows, Wild Plum Thickets, Berry Patches, Pawpaw Patches and Walnut Groves flourishing in public parks, schools, yard and industrial sites across the city…  weaving together to form ecological corridors connecting into the surrounding watershed. Imagine children collecting and growing seeds of resilient, genetically diverse Pawpaws, Persimmons, Peaches, Chums, Asian Pears and more. Imagine welcoming home endangered Rusty-Patched Bumble Bees and endangered Bats. 

Food Forests — and the nuts, fruits and plants that populate them — have been cultivated on Turtle Island since time immemorial. Ever wonder how Pawpaw travelled north to Ontario? How Oak Savannas came to be? Why Pecans are often found in fertile bottomlands and along rivers? How Peaches spread across Turtle Island? Or that the incredible biodiversity of the Amazon rainforest was shaped by the Maya Milpa Cycle, an Indigenous agricultural practice which Garrison Wilkes, a maize researcher, called “one of the most successful human inventions ever created.” In cultivating food forests with Indigenous wisdom, Lyla June, Diné artist and activist, writes that:

“There’s a soil core, from what is now called Kentucky, that goes back 10,000 years. It shows that from 10,000 years ago up to about 3,000 years ago, it was mainly a cedar and hemlock forest. Then, around 3,000 years ago, in a relatively short time, the composition of the whole forest changed to a black walnut, hickory nut, chestnut, and oak forest. Additionally, the pollen evidenced edible species like lamb’s quarters and sumpweed. People who moved in 3,000 years ago radically changed the way the land looked and tasted. These are anthropogenic or human-made foodscapes, where inhabitants would shape the land in a non-dominating and gentle way.”

Chelsea Geralda Armstrong’s work through HER Lab contributes to re-story-ation by seeking out the stories of “human-landscape interactions in the past and how those dynamics relate to the present.”

Armstrong’s research…

“…challenges long held assumptions about Indigenous land-use and resource management in the Pacific Northwest, which depicts Indigenous peoples as principally relying on marine and riverine resources (e.g. for shellfish, salmon, or herring), only intermittently ‘gathering’ edible plants from the bounty of naturally productive forests. This entrenched perspective has oriented archaeological research for decades, so that we are only now compiling the data required to learn about the diversity, nuance, and complexity of ancient human-forest interactions, and implications relating to land-use, food revitalization efforts, and climate change.”

As Robert wrote about last month, one story that’s told is that humans are bad for the Land. Re-story-ation helps recover the story of another type of relationship with the Land. A respectful, reciprocal relationship in which both Land and People flourished. A story we can look to for guidance and inspiration. The incredible biodiversity of Indigenous Food Forests is revealed by Chelsea Armstrong’s research into the forest gardens of British Columbia:

“Forest gardens have substantially greater plant and functional trait diversity than periphery forests even more than 150 years after management ceased. Forests managed by Indigenous peoples in the past now provide diverse resources and habitat for animals and other pollinators and are more rich than naturally forested ecosystems... For millennia, Indigenous peoples increased plant productivity and availability through long-distance transplanting, controlled burning, weeding, fertilizing, coppicing, and pruning (to increase flowering, yields of fruit, promoting health and vigor, and to control size)... Forest gardens; high concentrations of perennial fruit and nut trees and shrubs, and herbaceous root food crops and medicines.  The increased frequency of ethnobotanically important plants in forest gardens includes a composition of species including: Pacific crabapple (Malus fusca), hazelnut (Corylus cornuta), red elderberry (Sambucus racemosa), wild rice root (Fritillaria camschatcensis), stinging nettle (Urtica dioica), highbush cranberry (Viburnum edule), 5 types of Vaccinium, 3 types of Rubus, nootka rose (Rosa nutkana) and much more.”

Re-storying with Food Forests

Indigenous communities are leading re-story-ation across Turtle Island, including here in Katarokwi at the Indigenous Food Sovereignty Garden. Another example is the Osage Orchard project in Pawhuska, Oklahoma profiled in community orchards for food sovereignty, human health, and climate resilience:

“An Osage cook, which is a respected position within the Osage community, provided guidance on the fruit and nuts that tend to be preferred by those who attend cultural events. Apples and peaches fit into that category. Other species were selected based on their cultural relevance, particularly considering edible products that were historically gathered by the Osage during the period when the tribe inhabited the land we now call Missouri, and surrounding areas. Emphasis was placed on species that have the greatest benefits for human health, including nutrient-dense berries and heart-healthy nuts. Finally, an important goal was for the design to be practical and utilitarian in terms of managing the trees for production over time.”

Plants include:

  • Fruit: Pawpaw (Asimina triloba), American Persimmon, Prairie Rose (Rosa arkansana Porter), Wild Plum

  • Berries: Elderberry, American Mulberry, Wild Grape (Carya illinoinensis), Blackberry, Raspberry, Dewberry (Rubus sp.) and Strawberry (Fragaria vesca)

  • Nuts: Black Walnut (Juglans nigra), Pecan (Carya illinoinensis), Hickory (Carya spp.), Oak (Quercus spp.), American Hazelnut (Corylus americana)

This design isn’t frozen to a historical point in time. Instead, the design looks to the past, present and future, incorporating domesticated varieties from other Lands such as Apples and Peaches.

Ecological principles to guide us

What principles might help guide us here in Kingston in the design of Food Forest plant communities that are respectful to the Land? To assist with climate migration, we already include Carolinian species such as Pawpaws, Persimmons, Redbuds and Red Mulberries in our Pocket Food Forests. But what about plants from further afield? What about culturally important plants for the many immigrants who now call Kingston home?

Hyeone Park, for her Master’s thesis, explored a food forestry model and monitoring framework with a mind to use food forestry as a means of ecological restoration. She suggests that Food Forests that include non-native species, if guided by restoration principles and resilience thinking, may serve as an innovative tool for the ecological restoration of urban landscapes.

  • Principle 1: Ecological integrity, including integrity of the biotic community (plant diversity, trophic structure, regeneration, reproduction, genetic diversity), habitat quality (habitat structural diversity, landscape connectivity), ecological processes (productivity, carbon sequestration, succession, nutrient cycling), soil (physical, biological, chemical characteristics), disturbance (diseases & pests, herbivory, environmental factors). 

  • Principle 2: Informed by past (historical knowledge, historical biological community or processes, native species richness and its cover) and future (climate change, weather patterns). 

  • Principal 3: Social benefits and engagement. Culturally identified and spiritual values. Social equity. Food security. Outreach. Education.

  • Principle 4: Long-term sustainability. Prepared for and resilient to extreme weather. Self-regulating. Functionally diverse. Collaborative stewardship

What if we imagined our Food Forests as places where community is built and expanded, people are empowered to learn more about the ecosystems of which they are apart and provided opportunities for cultural expression through foodways. Here John Taylor and Sarah Lovell provide design principles to achieve this recognizing the unique challenges of urban sites.

As I think about re-story-ation and the ancient relationships of humans with food forests  —  practicing disturbance regimes such as fire, selecting seeds to ensure genetic diversity and breed new varieties, trading and transporting seeds to extend ranges — I think about humans as integral members of a Food Forest community. Food Forests, in all of their manifestations, are experiments in re-story-ation.

Two models: Forage Forests and Food Forests

Galiano Conservancy Association integrates sustainable food systems into their restoration work. In collaboration with Penelakut First Nation, the Restoration Nuts’a’maat Forage Forest  “is an ecocultural restoration project that reimagines the relationships we can have with damaged ecologies and with one another.” In the Hul’qumi’num language, nuts’a’maat means “working together with one heart, one mind.” The Forage Forest is home to more than 50 species of edible and medicinal native plants.

This Community Food Forest, which mimics a natural forest, balances ecological restoration with food production and contains many non-native species. The ecological and social value of the Community Food Forest is guided by the principles and monitoring framework developed in collaboration with Hyeone Park.

Every yard could include a Pocket Food Forest or Pocket Forage Forest. With my Slavic heritage (and thanks to Squirrels who planted nine Black Walnuts in my yard), a Food Forest community close to my heart is a Black Walnut community. Kyrgyzstan is the birthplace of domesticated Apples and home to traditional agroforestry in which Walnuts are cultivated along with Wild Apples, Apricots, Pears, Almonds and Cherries.

Immigrants bring with them diverse cultural practices and foodways. My neighbours, originally from China, cultivate culturally important plants including Beef and Onion Plant/Chinese Cedar (Toona sinesis) in their Food Forest. Park’s ecological principles could help guide us in choosing ecologically compatible, resilient and culturally important plants from other parts of the world into Food Forests that are inclusive of culturally diverse foodways.

Integrating non-native plants into Food Forests

An interesting lens might be to distinguish between primarily human crops vs what Solomon Doe, author of native plant agriculture, calls biological crops. While Doe only works with native plants, all of whom have value to our Earthly kin, he categorizes biological crops as those not particularly edible to humans, but of high ecological value. Think Asters and Goldenrods. He aims for 7-20% biological crops.

Perhaps we adopt Douglas Tallamy’s recommendation of at least 70% native plants in Food Forests. Oaks, Hickories, Persimmons, Pawpaws, Red Mulberries, Hazelnuts are native, so extremely valuable to our Earthly Kin, but are also excellent food producing plants. With Park’s ecological principles in mind, we could then carefully select up to 30% non-native food producing plants, some of whom (cultivated Blackberries, Raspberries, Asian Pears, Apples) are still highly valuable for pollinators, insects and birds.

Food Forests that include non-native plants can mimic native forest plant communities. In modelling this for a temperate climate, Andrew Walton offers a framework for choosing non-native species that are analogous to native species in ecosystem function, but that produce more food for humans. 

Here’s Walton’s example of what he calls a “nature analogous” Food Forest with five different successional layers yielding food, fibre and medicine. While his research was based in the UK, we could experiment with this model, but with a stronger emphasis on native plants.

With one in three Kingston households facing food insecurity, in 2025 Kingston declared food security an emergency. With so many of our Earthly Kin in crisis, in 2024 Kingston signed the Montreal Biodiversity Pledge committing to be a champion for biodiversity. Re-story-ation with Food Forests can help us ensure food security for all  — humans as well as our Earthly kin.

– Joyce