‘Come by and pick a strawberry’

Food forests put vacant city land to good use

by

Here, there and everywhere are remnant bits of land that don’t fit easily into our regimented schemes of yards and parks. Take, for instance, a modest triangle at the intersection of Lansing and Richard streets alongside Starkweather Drive on Madison’s east side. It was exactly the sort of leftover parcel that Emily Steinwehe and Erin McWalter of Wisconsin Food Forests were looking for: city-owned, underused, full of unseen potential, and in an area where the neighbors can get behind the concept of creating a communal food plot, or “food forest.” 

These are not community gardens full of annual crops, but an edible landscape, with food-producing plants that come back year after year: trees with fruits and nuts, berry bushes, even asparagus. And the food produced is for anyone. Part of the agreement with the city for using the land is that the food has to be available to all and cannot be sold. 

“Come by and pick a strawberry,” says Steinwehe.

Just how does one find these leftover parcels? The city’s website has a map of city-owned potential edible landscape plots, which includes not only city parks but land under the jurisdiction of city engineering, stormwater and the water utility.

The spot at Lansing and Richard was “too close to Starkweather Creek to build a house,” Steinwehe says of the orphan parcel under the auspices of the city engineering department. She floated the idea of establishing a food forest on the site with neighborhood groups on Facebook and Nextdoor and found that residents supported the project. Immediate neighbors were even willing to have hoses hooked up to their outdoor spigots for watering. 

Steinwehe also met with the Eastmorland Community Association, the area’s neighborhood association, which donated money to buy plants. “I figured this neighborhood would be good, and I was right,” Steinwehe says.

She then completed an application with the city to use the land for an edible landscape and worked with Amy Dusick of Two Ferns Native Nursery to come up with a planting design. Steinwehe polled the neighborhood via an online survey about plants they were most interested in; 87 persons responded.

“We try to mimic nature,” says Steinwehe. But which perennial food-bearing plants are best for any particular plot may vary. “It’s hard to grow nut trees because of the squirrels,” Steinwehe says. Apples are difficult because they don’t easily produce edible fruit without considerable spraying.

The Lansing Food Forest, planted with neighborhood volunteers in spring 2020, now boasts two tart cherry trees, pear trees (which Steinwehe terms “not that easy” but easier than apples), strawberries, juneberry, honeyberry, gooseberry, currants, asparagus, rhubarb and herbs. In something of an experiment, Steinwehe is trying a hardy apricot at the site. Though they don’t always fruit in this zone, being within a city creates a “heat island,” explains Steinwehe, and she has been growing peaches successfully on another Madison-area plot. It does take a while for cherries and pears to bear fruit; Steinwehe estimates six years. 

The volunteers tend the plot along with Steinwehe: “We have awesome volunteers. They weed and plant and mulch.” Steinwehe and McWalter help the project out for the first few years but “eventually the neighborhood takes over,” she says. “Since what we planted are perennials, the plants should do just fine since they will be well established after two to three years.”

The Lansing site has a prominent sign explaining the garden and its fruits and produce are for everyone, a bench for sitting and enjoying the garden, a seed library and a “plant trading post” for people who, for instance, have separated their hostas and have too many. This spring there was a load of free wood chips for neighbors to use. Steinwehe tips her hat to a precursor group, Madison Fruits and Nuts, now mostly inactive, that worked to make these food forests possible with the city. The permitting process was finalized in 2014.

Steinwehe, director of sustainability at Blooming Grove Montessori, has a bachelor of science degree in biology and has worked in education at the Aldo Leopold Nature Center. Wisconsin Food Forests creates three food forests a year on public land, free, in part because Steinwehe is devoted to increasing the amount of healthy food that’s available for people. In that sense each plot is a kind of “demonstration site as to what’s possible [on land] that is something besides a lawn.” The plots also act as pollinator habitats and homes for wildlife, she notes.

For a fee, Wisconsin Food Forests will also create an edible landscape on private land, providing all the plants, fencing, mulch, compost, good soil, layout and advice — even a bench and a seed library.

A few other edible landscapes have been planted on city land since the ordinance was passed. One at Hollister Triangle Park on Commonwealth Avenue boasts a thriving bed of mint, but mostly flowers. Some fruit trees, not currently signed as edible landscapes, were planted in Vilas Park in 2017. At least one — a peach — is now bearing fruit.

Yes, you can eat a peach. They’re there for you.