Food Forests Bring Fruit Harvests and Deeper Connections to Land

Maryland Forest Service promotes the many benefits of making space for edible plants

Francis Smith, Maryland’s lead agroforestry planner, points out a persimmon at the White Marsh Park Edible Trail. Photo by Joe Zimmermann, Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

Enter the neat rows of the White Marsh Park Edible Trail and pick some persimmons, blueberries, or hazelnuts. If you follow their harvest schedule, you can pick them off the branch and take them home with you, at no charge.

The Edible Trail is what might be called a food forest, or a forest garden. It’s an example of agroforestry—a range of practices that incorporate primarily native fruit and nut-bearing trees and shrubs as well as herbaceous species and fungi into the landscape. Taking ideas from both forestry and sustainable agriculture, agroforestry aims to create multi-purpose areas that benefit people and the environment.

“It’s a different way of looking at the land and how to manage and farm it,” said Francis Smith, the lead agroforestry planner for the state and a natural resources planner with the Maryland Forest Service, who acted as a project designer for the Edible Trail.

It’s a new concept for public land in Maryland, but it’s also a return to older ideas of human relationships with the environment. Smith said he was inspired by indigenous practices when he designed and put in place much of the Edible Trail, which covers 1.5 acres in a corner of White Marsh Park in Centreville.

“All of this is based on indigenous, Native American knowledge,” he said. “These are things that indigenous people did, and we’ve lost that. We’re trying to bring back those species and those practices.”

Planting and construction began at the Edible Trail in 2020, supported by a $10,000 Outreach and Restoration grant from the Chesapeake Bay Trust. Queen Anne’s County Parks and Recreation and Corsica River Conservancy partnered with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources on the project.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted some of the maintenance on the site, Smith said one of the benefits of food forests is that they require little upkeep once established. As woody perennial crops, they don’t require annual replanting. And native plants were selected that can prosper without fertilizer or an irrigation system, although Maryland Forest Service staff have watered the plants during drought periods. An 8-foot fence installed by forestry staff keeps out deer but stays unlocked for visitors.

This year, nearly every species is producing, except for the paw paw trees, which will take a few more years to mature. Park visitors can stroll through the six plots, picking blueberry, American plum, hazelnut, black chokeberry, and persimmon. In the future, staff and volunteers may add beach plum, serviceberry, or elderberry to the site.

The Edible Trail is now open for tours of what Smith described as a “playground and living lab” that showcases what’s possible for food forests in the area and in someone’s own backyard. Volunteers help weed and water plants, and an Eagle Scout built compost bins for the site.

Food forests and related agroforestry practices are starting to catch on in Maryland thanks to efforts from the Maryland Forest Service as well as the work of nonprofits and residents.

American plums grow off a tree at the Edible Trail. Smith said many people don’t realize there’s a native variety of plum, but they can be used for jams, juice, wine, or can be dehydrated into prunes. Photo by Joe Zimmermann/DNR

Michael Judd, who runs a food forest called Long Creek Nursery at his home in Frederick County, said Maryland is particularly well suited for food forests. A longtime advocate for permaculture, Judd spent two decades building food forests in Nicaragua, and he said Maryland’s precipitation and growing season reminds him of Central America.

“When you observe the latent energy in the land here, the energy in this area supports trees and tree crops,” Judd said. “A lawn you stop mowing will regenerate naturally as a forest. That energy is what this ecosystem is designed for—we’re in a forested ecosystem, the ecosystem supports [those trees] and they thrive.”

Judd and his family chose to settle in Maryland in part because of its potential for food forests, he said, calling it one of “the sweetest spots on the planet for growing.” He runs the ecological landscape design firm Ecologia and co-founded the nonprofit SilvoCulture, which plants nut trees in the mid-Atlantic.

Lincoln Smith, the co-founder of Forested, LLC, a landscape design and education firm based in Bowie, said he has a list of 60 to 70 species that do well in Maryland food forests. These include many native plants, such as sochan (a type of black-eyed Susan that makes a nice green for eating or cooking) and ostrich ferns (that produce fiddleheads) as well as some cultivated species that are a good balance for the local habitat, like Chinese chestnuts.

While some of these plants may be unfamiliar to many Marylanders, Smith said it’s also an opportunity for people to eat more diverse foods that are grown locally.

“A lot of the foods we’re accustomed to are not native,” he said. “At least half of the effort with forest gardening is trying to introduce people to these foods and make them an enjoyable experience.”

That’s why Forested hosts a “forest feast” every year, where a chef prepares items from the food forests and introduces ways to cook chestnuts and persimmons.

Food forests often incorporate polyculture—planting undergrowth and canopy species that work together—to mimic cooperative systems found in nature. While many plants are edible, some plants in a food forest can be chosen for their benefits to other plants, pollinators, or birds.

Advocates note that food forests can take root anywhere, from a backyard to the edges of farmland. Silvopasture uses fruiting and shade trees to provide foraging and shelter for livestock animals.

“Let’s do less work and be more efficient at what we’re doing instead of fighting nature all the time,” said Sabina Shaub, who recently introduced hazelnut shrubs at her Upper Marlboro farm. She plans to harvest hazelnuts, and let her sheep forage the leaves, shoots, and leftover nuts. “Let’s work with nature instead of fighting against it.”

Shaub’s planting was supported by a Maryland Department of Agriculture Healthy Soils Competitive Fund grant. Grants for agroforestry plantings and informational resources are also available through The Nature Conservancy, Appalachian Sustainable Development, and Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education. Further information and resources on agroforestry are available from the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Agroforestry Center and University of Missouri’s Center for Agroforestry. 

Funds acquired through Chesapeake Bay Trust grants for plantings can involve parts of agroforestry, like food forests. Tree plantings installed by restoration groups such Alliance for Chesapeake Bay or Western Maryland Resource Conservation and Development will also incorporate fruit or nut-bearing trees and shrubs depending on landowner objectives. 

Keith Ohlinger received a $52,500 grant in 2019 from the Department of Natural Resources through a Forest Conservation Act fund derived from a Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission settlement, which he used for agroforestry practices on his Howard County farm, including the building of hedgerows and alley cropping. He said he thinks silvopasture, and local farming that uses self-sustaining techniques inspired by nature, will be “the farming of the future.”

Rows of fruit and nut-producing plants, most of which were sourced from the John S. Ayton State Tree Nursery, at the White Marsh Park Edible Trail. Photo by Joe Zimmermann/DNR

Ben Friton, director of the central Maryland nonprofit the REED Center, points to food forests as a way to both create thriving ecosystems and meet the acute needs of people. Similar to the use of victory gardens in World War II, food forests can help people maintain resilient places close to where they live.

“It can’t just be that we have land set aside for nature, and we have land for human needs,” Friton said. “We’ve got to reintegrate these things.”

The Maryland Forest Service is integrating the lessons of food forests into tree plantings. In October, the Forest Service planted a demonstration native food forest behind the City of Brunswick Food Bank in Frederick County. When opportunity allows, the Forest Service also incorporates edible species into its regular plantings. Partnerships with Maryland Department of Agriculture are supporting use of agroforestry and food forests for soil health benefits, where permanent rooting helps build organic matter and contribute to carbon sequestration.

Carbon sequestered by trees helps mitigate climate change. Trees also purify the air, filter and cycle water, and provide habitat for wildlife.

Planting something edible often gets people in the community excited about the work, Anna Twigg, a Forest Service tree planting specialist, said, and it helps reiterate the many benefits of trees as Maryland works toward the 5 Million Trees Initiative.

“It’s a cool way to add another layer to tree plantings,” she said. “Beyond all the other things that trees do, it’s fun to be able to eat things off of them too.”

By Joe Zimmermann, science writer with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources