One walk in the woods behind Western Washington University’s Outback Farm is enough to show it’s no ordinary forest. The usual tall firs give way to smaller trees like apple and walnut, and edible fruits and plants such as salmonberries, highbush cranberry and thimbleberries all fill the scene with their bounty.
It’s called a food forest, and the ideology behind it might help colleges both around Bellingham and elsewhere address two widespread concerns: reconnecting their students to the land on which they’re learning, and making campuses more ecologically functional.
The concept of food forests harkens back to Indigenous forest gardens: large areas of woodland in which growth was managed using burning, pruning, soil amendment and other techniques to allow a suite of edible native plants to grow. Many still stand today in the Pacific Northwest and British Colombia as living proof of the sophisticated land-use and agricultural practices employed by Coast Salish tribes.
Forest gardens don’t just provide sustenance, either — they also come with major ecological benefits. In a 2021 study, ecologist Chelsey Armstrong and her team at the University of British Columbia partnered with local tribes to show in Western scientific terms what tribal elders had been saying for decades: Food forests fundamentally change ecosystems and make them more productive.
The research showed one of the keys behind forest gardens was their variety: many different trees, shrubs, herbs, and roots were all grown together, each supporting a different niche in the ecosystem. “Every single layer of that forest is occupied, and occupied well,” Armstrong said in an interview with Cascadia Daily News.
This diversity not only provided tribes with a variety of food crops but also made the forest gardens much less susceptible to takeover by invasive species and the surrounding conifer forests — even after 150 years without management.
Different communities, different takes
These traits have attracted groups interested in building ecologically functional spaces that can also produce food, including college campuses. However, making a food forest from scratch is not an easy task. The soil, species, and whether or not to include exotic plants all must be considered, but perhaps even more important are the goals: how a food forest meets the needs of its community.
For the folks in the forest garden club at Northwest Indian College, building a food forest is about connecting to the land as much as it is about the food itself.
“Our interest on campus is to make it alive with what grows here, with native plants,” said Jessica Urbanec, a Lummi elder and field instructor involved with the garden project. “And it’s not necessarily to sustain ourselves in terms of groceries but to enhance our sense of place and season.”
That sense of place could be knowing it’s July because the thimbleberries are ripening, or a student being able to grab a strawberry in the spring on the way to class. “With those, you know where you are,” Urbanec said.
The food forest at the Outback Farm is not a traditional forest garden, as it incorporates several exotic species like apples, pears and walnut, as well as more European-style garden plots. Still, it remains a haven for college students caught up in the whirlwind of modern campus life.
“I think the single biggest thing the Outback does [for students] is plant therapy and mental health support during exams or whatever intense thing is going on,” said John Tuxill, faculty advisor for the Outback Farm. “I’ve had so many students tell me this is their place to come and chill out.”
For the tribal students at NWIC, building a food forest is also about reconnecting to sleeping cultural knowledge, as well as ecological education.
“I’ve grown up here my entire life and never gotten into the ecology of the land until coming here and deepening my love for my home,” said Latacha Johnson, a Lummi student also in the forest garden club. “Learning about one little plant a day … it gives me an awareness of what surrounds me.”
Right now, the food forest at NWIC is still in the planning stages. Urbanec said it can’t replace the old forests where her ancestors foraged hundreds of years ago that were bulldozed or logged, but she hopes it will bring students an opportunity to learn from nature. The food forest at the Outback Farm is a few years further along, but Tuxill said they still have a lot to learn, especially with controlling the invasive buttercup and blackberry that threaten to overrun their plots every summer.
Both food forest projects have also struggled with finding continuity in their projects over the years, due to the high turnover of student involvement and the short-term nature of grant funding needed to purchase equipment and pay student workers. Armstrong said the problem is widespread among projects aiming to start or revive forest gardens.
“What funders can’t get into their heads [is] it takes so much time,” Armstrong explained. “You’ve got this wicked proposal, people are into it, and you get two years of funding? Sorry, but this is going to take at least 10.”
Both NWIC and The Outback have had to grapple with the issue for years, but by establishing faculty advisors and student organizations dedicated to maintaining the food forests, they hope to keep knowledge and enthusiasm fresh while bringing in steady streams of funding.
They may not be the sophisticated forest gardens established by Coast Salish tribes centuries ago, but both campus food forests are striving to bring students together under similar ideologies of community and place. The ecological benefits are also still present, with the students at NWIC already noticing an increase in pollinator activity with their plantings. Wildlife like rabbits and deer regularly frequent the Outback food forest.
Food forests young and old promise to remind today’s youth of one of nature’s oldest lessons: give to the forest, and the forest will surely give back.
Ben Long is an environmental/science reporter, placed at CDN through the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Mass Media Fellowship. Reach him at benlong@cascadiadaily.com.
