Food Forest

UMBC’s Food Forest

The Food Forest at UMBC seeks to create a long-term source of food, medicine, fuel, education, and habitat for a range of different species. The Food Forest is a component of the efforts of the UMBC student organization, “The Garden.” The Food Forest, once matured, will provide healthy food for students on campus and for the surrounding community.  This project will ultimately complement the efforts of the Retriever Essentials Program while also helping to address community resilience and decreasing the community’s need for outside food and fertilizer.

What is Forest Gardening?

Forest gardening is a low-maintenance sustainable plant-based food production and agroforestry system based on woodland ecosystems, incorporating fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, vines, and perennial vegetables which have yields directly useful to humans. Making use of companion planting, these can be intermixed to grow in a succession of layers, to build a woodland habitat.