The Cultivated with Care perennial food forest at 825 18th Street, Charleston, IL provides the community with an educational demonstration of how a food forest works while at the same time helping to relieve poverty by offering the food grown there to those in need and promoting social welfare by helping to improve local food security. Visitors are encouraged to help with harvesting so that they can try a particular food and determine whether they could grow it at home. The overall message is one of food security.
“The plants we’ve chosen will collect and cycle Earth’s minerals, water, and air; shade the soil and renew it with leafy mulch; and yield fruits and greens for people and wildlife.”
- TOBY HEMENWAY, GAIA’S GARDEN: A GUIDE TO HOME-SCALE PERMACULTURE
Climate change is going to affect the way we get food as weather conditions become unpredictable and fossil fuel use abates. A perennial food forest brings food production much closer to consumers thereby eliminating much of this dependence on fossil fuel. A surprising amount of food can be produced in a food forest. It utilizes space to grow food in different layers – large trees to produce fruits and nuts, smaller trees and bushes under the trees to produce berries and fruit, and groundcover plants to produce a variety of other foods. Also, once it’s established, there’s very little work (compared to annual gardens) other than harvesting. Enjoy exploring this site and check out the Food Forest in person!
“I’d love to see a new form of social security - everyone taught how to grow their own; fruit and nut trees planted along every street, parks planted out to edibles, every high rise with a roof garden, every school with at least one fruit tree for every kid enrolled.”
- JACKIE FRENCH, NEW PLANTS FROM OLD
