The glorious rise of food forests
No patio pots here. By planting a multi-level food forest in his Los Angeles backyard, Jose Ramirez can grow enough food to help feed his family year-round. (Photo source: Dená Brummer)
Jose Ramirez, an elementary school teacher and artist, is growing a 7,000 square foot food forest in his backyard in East Los Angeles. From bananas to pluots, pears to avocados, he squeezes in every vegetable, fruit, and herb he possibly can. “I came from the school of thought that says, if you are going to grow something, grow something that can produce and help feed your family all year round,” he says.
The seven layers of a food forest. (Photo Source: Graham Burnett, Wikimedia Commons)
Ramirez is among a growing number of gardeners in Los Angeles who are pushing the limits of backyard gardening. No patio pots for these folks! These growers aim to produce so much food their gardens qualify as little farms.
But the more popular term is food forest, which is just what it sounds like—an edible garden made up of many different species, and grown with minimal intervention. It’s not a new or novel concept. In fact, it’s the world's oldest form of land use and is the standard in many tropical regions across the world.
A food forest mimics a forest edge that is planted with edible perennial plants. Picture all of the vertical layers of a forest growing together: Tall trees, small trees, shrubs, herbs, and ground cover. Tall, canopy trees grow inward from the edge. Smaller trees push out from underneath the tall trees to catch the sun’s rays. Shrubs, herbs, flowers, and ground cover can pop up along the sunnier edges.
A typical forest edge can look a little busy. Sometimes vines grow up the trees and mushrooms grow under the tallest trees in the shade. But the wild appearance belies the planning that goes into it.
Ramirez spent endless hours after work turning this lot into his own residential food forest. (Photo Source : Jose Ramirez)
Food forest farmers stack the layers of the forest to make sure each is situated for optimum sun exposure. Intertwined, they produce a vibrant, productive, low-maintenance ecosystem. It’s an approach shared by Robert Hart, a forest gardening pioneer who practiced the approach in the 1980s. His work rose in popularity thanks to Bill Mollison, a writer and gardener who coined the term permaculture, and references Hart’s work in his books.
“A food forest is a system that can take care of itself,” says Joanna Glovinsky, founder and owner of Fruitstitute, an educational fruit tree service. “It's working with Mother Nature, and not trying, not working against it.” She promotes the practice to her clients because, she says, it's the easiest way to grow anything. Plus it adds biodiversity to the soil and provides nutritionally rich and dense fruit and vegetables.
Jose Ramirez
Jose Ramirez grew up in El Sereno, California, with parents who only planted fruit trees and edible perennials. “I know that plants are always producing and helping you,” he says. “But in the back of my head, I can hear my father or mother telling me ‘If you are going to invest your time and energy in the idea of growing something, make it count.’”
In 2014, he bought the empty lot next to his house and expanded his multi-level food forest from 4,000 to 7,000 square feet. Since then, he’s planted hundreds of fruit trees, plants, medicinal herbs, and flowers, and grows food all year long. “At one point I counted 400 trees growing in the backyard,” he says.
He has strategically planted his forest garden in a way that functions like an orchestra. At any given point in the year, something is ready to harvest while other plants rest, waiting for their turn on stage.
“It’s nice to know I don’t have to go to the grocery store to buy something like a cucumber,” says Ramirez. “I can always come into my garden and find something similar in function and texture. I love the endless creativity it inspires.”
Advice for aspiring food foresters: Ramirez can easily recall the growing pains involved in setting up his food forest. “You are going to kill some plants and trees. You are going to have to deal with insects, rodents or birds. It's easy to feel overwhelmed,” he says. “ I had to figure out how to correctly prune so many different varieties of fruit trees because you can’t prune a mango tree the same way as an apricot tree or avocado tree. But at some point things will turn, plants will start to grow. You just have to be patient and a student of mother nature.”
An overhead view of Ramirez’s extensive food forest. (Photo Source : Jose Ramirez)
KEN SPARKS
Ken Sparks says everything he grows tastes “a lot” better than store-bought produce. (Photo source: Dená Brummer)
After years spent building community gardens in Illinois, Ohio and California, Ken Sparks decided to start a food forest. He had the space—a 3,000-square-foot backyard in East Los Angeles. And, thanks to the pandemic, he had the time.
During pre-pandemic times, Sparks was a full time musician and television/film production coordinator. When the country shut down, he pivoted to working as a garden consultant. The time he spent calculating whether it was safe to go to the grocery store also gave him another incentive.
“I have always had a home garden, but when the pandemic hit I decided to establish my food forest and triple the amount of growing space I have,” says Sparks. “I wanted to be in the position where I didn’t have to go to the grocery store if I didn’t want to.”
Growing a large-scale food garden has had unexpected benefits. To date, Sparks has planted around 70 fruit trees, too many perennial vegetables and fruits to count, and enough annuals to fill six raised beds. He says everything he grows tastes “a lot” better than anything you can buy.
“I just love the diversity,” he says. “I love coming into my backyard and seeing so many things thriving. From the plants, to the flowers and even the animals. It provides an opportunity to garden gracefully with nature.” And with a food forest, you’re never done. “I am still finding places to plant and new plants to integrate.”
Advice for aspiring food foresters: Plant a wide assortment of fruits and vegetables, says Sparks. It’s an invitation to pollinators and a way to promote resilience—for your garden and for yourself. Sparks says he gets enormous pleasure from knowing he has his own food supply right out back.
Nina Weithorn (left) and Nina Anakar enjoying the fruits of their labor. (Photo source : Nina Weithorn)
Nina Weithorn & Nina Anakar
In another corner of East Los Angeles, Farmer Nina Weithorn and Chef Nina Anakar started a 2,000 square foot food forest with the intent of creating a demonstration garden to empower people to garden.
The space they’d inherited was a bare rectangular-shaped backyard with depleted soil and, in the early days, they spent time studying the plot before doing anything. After deciding to mimic nature, they laid down compost, installed an irrigation system, and planted the lot with the rise and fall of their land, rather than in rigid rows.
Weithorn and Anakar transformed this barren 2,000 square-foot lot into Ziza Urban Farm within a year. (Photo source: Nina Weithorn)
“From a culinary perspective, it has been amazing to see how polyculture works in a food forest setting,” said Anakar. “You are forced to think about gardening in a non-linear fashion. We’re growing a kitchen garden without having to continuously pull plants out the ground at the end of a season.”
So far they have planted 25 fruit trees and a wide assortment of perennial plants under the trees, creating a symbiotic relationship. “We tried to create a system of mutual aid in an ecological setting,” explains Weithorn, a professional farmer and landscaper.
They planted comfrey around the trees, because it forms deep roots and can lay down nutrients in the soil. They added yarrow and other flowers to attract the pollinators that will fertilize their fruit trees and vegetable crops. And they added strong-smelling plants, like onions and garlic, to serve as pest-repellants. “Every plant has a different function,” says Weithorn.
The two of them spend close to 25 to 30 hours a week managing and harvesting their food forest. For Anakar the biggest highlight has been growing and harvesting pantry items.
“I am amazed that we can grow certain plants, herbs and spices that are often labeled exotic,” explains Anakar. “And we've been really pushing the limit to build a spice pantry from our food forest. We have grown cardamom, turmeric, ginger, fennel seeds—just all different kinds of herbs and spices that I honestly never knew you could grow yourself.”
Advice for aspiring food foresters: Both Anakar and Weithorn recommend that anyone interested in starting a food forest exercise patience, and try to go with the flow. “The greatest lesson I have learned in this process is to let go of any expectations, and to trust the process,” said Anakar.
The primary focus of Ziza Urban Farm is soil restoration. To transform the space, Weithorn and Anakar drew on a variety of methods, including planting cover-crops, relying on companion planting, creating organically rich soil through sheet-mulching, composting with worms—and the list goes on. (Photo source : Nina Weithorn)
Dená Brummer is a former Stone Pier Press News Fellow based in Los Angeles, CA.