With the upcoming class on Food Forestry, we have been immersed in learning about this subject. We have been fascinated with the idea of starting one or two smaller sections of a food forest. As always, the more we learn, the more we realize there is to learn. The modern concept of food forests is not the ancient agriculture practices we believed they were. We learned from our friends atWild Hudson Valley, Justin Wexler and Anna Plattner, that the indigenous people in our area used all methods to farm, gather, hunt, and find food in the healthy ecosystems they managed, utilized, and created. But the concept of a food forest is not linked to that at all.
Food forests are a modern idea that is an ecological approach that blends agroforestry methods with permaculture orchards and landscape design.From our experiments and personal research, we learned they are particularly successful in dry or tropical places. In those places, the canopy trees provide much needed shade to all the other layers, like the understory layer, the shrub layer, and the ground cover layer. Here in the Northeast, they are difficult to successfully implement in their full context due to our short growing season with long summer days and short winter days. They must compete fiercely for the sunlight in the short time they have to store as much energy as possible before winter dormancy comes again. This means that the limiting factor for optimal plant growth is a lack of sunlight exposure. Whereas in Costa Rica or Arizona, the sun is plentiful and the soil is too hot, so areas of shade become bastions of life and guardians of water.
We found that others in this region have modified the concept of food forests for our climate. For precise details, we can gain inspiration from the land around us. Down by the quarry pond, there are many Highbush Blueberries and Wild Sarsaparilla. Throughout the woods, there are countless Lowbush Blueberries and Black Huckleberries. In the wetter areas, we find Elderberries and Purple Flowering Raspberries. In the shadier spots in spring, we can find Ramps and Ostrich fern for fiddleheads. After the rains, the Fungi bloom in a variety of forms. From the winds, edible plants like Cattails, Blackcaps, and Milkweed have found a place in disturbed or wild areas. At our feet, there are Wild Strawberries, Purslane, and American hog peanuts. Above us, the leaves of the Oaks and Hickories form the canopy, showering us with nuts when the time is right.
The abundant Earth provides sustenance all around us, if you know where and when to look. If you are interested in more details about native edible plants you can grow in your own micro food forest, please join us at the end of the month for our Ecological Gardening Series: Creating a Food Forest & Cooking Demo. We will discuss the many edible plants that are all around us with a bonus cooking demonstration too!
-The Garden Team
Lorien McCabe Head Gardener & Volunteer Manager & Wren Waddington Assistant Head Gardener & Membership Manager
July 2026
Perception is so fluid. It is a constantly modifying principle of reality. When it was 80 degrees in May, we thought we might melt into the gardens. Now after a few weeks of extreme heat and humidity, 80 degrees seems like relief. This reminds of shifting baseline syndrome –– where now humans are very used to not sharing the planet with as many other species. We have lost an estimated 70% of all wildlife since the 1970’s. Of course, this is ultimately to our detriment. Biodiversity is key for healthy ecosystems –– each species we lose has a deleterious effect on those left behind.
In the heat, the garden team becomes crepuscular. We arrive early and leave early –– if the watering isn’t finished by 11am/noon, then we return in the evening to water among the fireflies and moths. They are literally in their element and we are inspired by their mating displays as we move slowly through the gardens. We learn how to modify our behavior, to adapt to the heat by moving through the gardens as they are in the shade, and leaving those gardens as the sun starts to touch them.
We just received many of our native plugs for planting. The shrub saplings from the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (NYS DEC) are not so patiently waiting in water buckets and soil containers. Our own transplants in Propagation Station are busting out of their boxes, even though we have been transplanting for months. The list goes on, but the humans are patiently waiting. The holding pattern will not break until the heat does, until the rain comes. Then the long planting days return, the steady immersion of roots to soil, water to seed. All of this flora will be planted in its well considered place and hopefully we have calculated correctly and they will have found their proper home. There they will spread, multiply, create seed, habitat, food, and air for so much life.
Our obsessive nature is revealed in our gardening –– the long days of Summer Solstice definitely encourage this madly damaging behavior. Wren and I push through physical pain and continue on. Our mental will and love of creating new plant life diminish any physical pain knowing that we only get one June a year. In extreme temperatures, we must choose balance. We need to stop, drink massive amounts of water, eat copious amounts of watermelon, and swim in the coolest water we can find. All of this fills our cup, allows us to care for others by sustaining ourselves. It is still a delicate balance to weave, one that expresses itself in rest on rainy days and a slow, constant push on mild days. We take inspiration from the wood turtle that came through the Park, the salamanders and snakes we swim with at the lake, the soft clouds that slowly roll over giving shade and respite. We focus on gratitude and observation of the diverse life all around us every day. We are still blessed with life all around, through and within us, above and below us.
- The Garden Team
Lorien McCabe Head Gardener & Volunteer Manager & Wren Waddington Assistant Head Gardener & Membership Manager
