The Hidden World of Boston’s Food Forests
Editor’s Note: An article in the forthcoming issue of Urban Forestry and Urban Greening provides new quantitative insight into the relationship between the prevalence of high-quality public green space and social connectivity: Cities with better park systems see measurably more more social connections between different income groups, more volunteers per capita, and more engagement with civic organizations. Hope Kelley offers a glimpse into what these spaces look like in Boston and how the Boston Food Forest Coalition is working to reinforce essential connections in a moment defined by division. – Alex Redfield
It’s a Saturday morning in July and you’ve stepped out the front door of your Jones Hill apartment building and onto the sidewalk. Looking out over a sunny Dorchester street, you see a woman walking her dog, a kid on a scooter, and a man pushing a baby carriage while chatting on the phone. It’s early yet, but you can feel the heat pressing down on the city, radiating back up at you from the dark and impermeable pavement.
You’ve nowhere to be (blessedly) for another few hours, so you stroll down the street with no direction in mind, turning on this road or that, and seeing where it takes you. As you turn the corner on Everett Avenue and walk down the hill, you begin to hear voices up ahead on the left, faint laughter ringing out from someplace unseen. As you draw nearer, you see a break in the buildings. Greenery spills out. You are standing at the entrance now—a few stone steps leading up to a pathway that winds into shrubs and trees. You vaguely remember, years ago, walking by this space when it was just an empty patch of grass. Could you be remembering that correctly? What is this space now? Who planted these trees, and who owns them?
A voice cuts through your questioning: “Hey there! Come on in!” You look behind you to see if, perhaps, the voice could be speaking to someone else. There’s no one there, so you place your foot on the stone steps and enter the space.
The first thing you notice is the temperature—it feels as though it’s dropped at least 10 degrees, with young trees shading the entire space. You also notice a few yellow and black swallowtail butterflies floating through the air on the breeze. Then, you see a kind-looking woman with short, curly hair approaching you along the stone dust pathway, smiling. You introduce yourself and begin chatting. You learn that yes, just a few years ago this space was an empty lot boasting nothing but a patchy layer of grass. Today, it is actively growing into the Uphams Corner Food Forest, a community-led public edible park, filled with perennial trees and shrubs that feed and nourish all (human and wild) who visit. The park is also home to handmade benches, tables, solar panels, a water catchment system, and interpretative signs that dot the pathways. This place is, you learn, a beloved community asset—and you’ve happened to stumble in during the caretaking team’s weekly work day.
The members of the caretaking team, it turns out, are mostly folks who live next door, one street over, or a few T stops away. They call themselves “stewards” and meet every Saturday morning to tackle food forest maintenance tasks, harvest whatever is ready (on offer this week are chives, honeyberries, raspberries, rhubarb, and wild greens), and spend quality time together. The woman who greeted you is Desiree, a lead steward of the park, and she invites you to join in for the second half of the work day. You help pull weeds from the stone dust pathway, and you’re soon introduced to the honeyberry patch, where you fill a bowl with the oblong purplish fruit—like a cross between a blueberry and a fig but related to neither—and you get your first taste of the berry, its skin warmed by the sun. You leave a few hours later, with the phone numbers of three stewards in your pocket and plans to return next Saturday to help re-stain the walnut benches throughout the park. Smiling as you walk away, you think this is what resilience looks like: knowing your neighbors; coming together to advance a common vision; and building a physical space to gather, grow things, and dream.
The Uphams Corner Food Forest is one of 13 public food forest parks (and growing!) across the City of Boston, each built and stewarded by the community members who make up the Boston Food Forest Coalition (BFFC). BFFC is a coalition of neighbors transforming vacant lots into locally run, edible public parks protected in perpetuity as part of BFFC’s community land trust structure. Each new food forest park contributes to the growing environmental and social resilience being woven across Boston, centered in neighborhoods with histories of inequitable access to parkland and its critical benefits. Once part of the coalition, a food forest’s stewardship team is connected to the rest of the stewardship network, weaving a community of practice and mutual aid across the coalition and the city. BFFC plans to build 30 food forest parks by 2030—preparing Boston for the future that is at our doorstep.
Desiree Baynes, a lead steward of the Uphams Corner Food Forest, welcomes visitors to the shady oasis. Photo courtesy of Boston Food Forest Coalition
Each of the 13 food forests has a slightly different story, with different histories, different pathways of community organizing, and different long-term visions. For example, the Edgewater Food Forest on River Street in Mattapan was, for decades, an empty lot nestled between several houses, backyards, and apartment buildings. Direct neighbors of the lot (many of whom are active in the local Edgewater Neighborhood Association) co-created a vision for a food forest in the empty space, eventually bringing BFFC leaders into the conversation as partners. Today, the Edgewater Food Forest, complete with stone chess tables and a large roofed stage, serves as “the shared living room” for the neighbors of River Street, with a focus on growing healthy food for people and creating opportunities to bring people together.
Farther north from River Street is the Savin Hill Wildlife Garden, nestled above Interstate 93 on Savin Hill Avenue in Dorchester. Also spearheaded by neighbors of the vacant space who partnered with BFFC, this park, filled with bird- and pollinator-friendly plant species, serves as wildlife habitat as well as space for humans. It’s an outdoor haven for neighbors living near the highway in a neighborhood without much public green space, and features a new patio (built this past year) to facilitate community gatherings.
It’s easy to assume that public green space is just about beauty, but that’s not always the full story. Public infrastructure like food forests—if designed to be welcoming, food-centric, and resembling elements of our natural environment—can support people, connection, and placemaking during an era in which it is remarkably easy to be disconnected. And when neighbors are connected through green spaces, they can sit together beneath a tree that provides shade and fruit and a place for children to play, and that tree will mean something to all of them. In the case of a food forest—a green space that neighbors build and own together—it’s not just a tree but one they planted together, one they are now responsible for and through which they become responsible to each other.
“Smiling as you walk away, you think this is what resilience looks like: knowing your neighbors; coming together to advance a common vision; and building a physical space to gather, grow things, and dream.”
The ripple effect of this kind of community activism is that neighbors begin to build their connection to and capacity for democracy and resistance. In a moment of retreat from visionary leadership at the federal level and within traditional policy circles, we are learning firsthand the value of grounded and transformative work at the local level, as opposed to waiting for top-down solutions. Communities all over our country are hungry for ways to participate in shaping a brighter present and future for themselves and their communities, and the food forests cropping up across Boston are solid examples of what it can look like to step into such visionary work.
Stewards, neighbors, city councilors, and the Mayor of Boston celebrate the ribbon cutting at the grand opening of the Maple Street Food Forest in Roxbury. Photo courtesy of Boston Food Forest Coalition
Projects like BFFC—those working to provide participatory and accessible processes to people building urban, community-led green spaces—ultimately make urban communities more livable. They build climate resilience by adding tree canopy to cool air temperatures, permeable ground surfaces (versus asphalt and concrete) to allow water to enter the water table, and plant roots to stabilize soil. Socially, community-owned public parks serve as “third spaces” outside of workplaces, and offer a place where neighbors can gather, meet one another, and exercise autonomy in a way that would otherwise be difficult.
Grassroots activism—while often fun, connective, energizing, and (in the case of food forests) filled with fresh local fruits—is not without its challenges. Building a public edible park in an urban setting with community time and energy is definitely a process. Typically, the process includes introductory meetings with BFFC and community partners (neighbors, neighborhood associations, and local leaders); city meetings; the drafting of proposals; the development of design processes with partners; more community meetings; construction; ongoing community development; grand opening planning; and, just for good measure, more community meetings. Communication and trust are essential to ensure as much alignment as possible between project partners and neighbors. There can be delays and disagreements at any stage of the process, and patience is required to keep moving things forward.
Community members collaborate on new plantings in the Frederick Douglass Peace Park in Roxbury. Photo courtesy of Boston Food Forest Coalition
The positive aspect of this dynamic is that perseverance—through slow timelines and unforeseen obstacles—serves to strengthen the bond between different parties and individuals. In the case of the Uphams Corner Food Forest, it took close to four years of community organizing, planning, and communicating to break ground on what would become the lush and abundant food forest that neighbors can visit today. Grassroots activism (and ongoing food forest care) must move at the speed of trust in order to be sustainable, and participants must be willing and open to learn at every stage of the process in order to stay responsive to what it requires of each of us.
When neighbors first came together a decade ago to form BFFC, we did so because it was joyful—our conversations, our shared meals, our hands in the soil. By coming together, we planted seeds of lasting resilience in our neighborhoods. Now, in a moment defined by urgent need, our work has never felt more vital. In the face of the climate crisis, we are building food forests across Boston that are rooted in hope. In the face of community disconnection, we are coming together to care for the land and each other. In the face of political and social upheaval, we are strengthening democracy and mutual aid in our neighborhoods. Amid the challenges we face collectively, BFFC offers one possible way forward: a replicable model of community-owned edible parks that strengthen the social fabric of our neighborhoods—proving that when we come together, we can thrive even in times of crisis. These community spaces can be seen as an embodiment of our collective will: a growing network of people reclaiming land, restoring ecosystems, cultivating food, building community cohesion, and strengthening our democracy muscle—one growing season at a time.
“When neighbors are connected through green spaces, they can sit together beneath a tree that provides shade and fruit and a place for children to play, and that tree will mean something to all of them.”
You’ve returned to the Uphams Corner Food Forest, this time for a Friday evening community celebration. The park is filled with neighbors of all different ages. Elders sit in folding chairs as kids weave through berry bushes and flowering shrubs. There’s a table lined with food and pitchers of cold tea flavored with berries from the park. Someone plays guitar and others join in to sing. A neighbor who helped start the park is moving across town, and offers a speech of gratitude and solidarity to the other stewards and neighbors involved in the project. At the core of the neighbor’s remarks is a takeaway message that encourages us “onward.” You look up to the treetops and around at the faces of the folks gathered with you, and think “Yes, this is what ‘onward’ looks like.”
Hope Kelley is a writer, artist, and activist based on Cape Cod. She works with the Boston Food Forest Coalition, where she directs communications, narrative strategy, and storytelling. She was a member of the sixth cohort of Food Solutions New England’s (FSNE’s) Network Leadership Institute, and continues to collaborate with FSNE’s communities of practice around collective narrative strategy in regional food systems work.