Grow a Food Forest

Ryan Cullen, field supervisor at Durham College, talks about the new food forest at Durham College.

Make a Food Forest

We chat with Ryan Cullen, the field supervisor at Durham College, about the newly planted food-forest garden at the college’s Whitby campus.

Cullen oversees a diverse market garden that includes tree fruit, small fruit, cut flowers, field vegetables, greenhouse vegetables, and microgreens. He previously joined us on the show in Aug 2019. Click here to tune in to that episode.

Food-Forest Garden

Cullen explains that the idea behind the food forest is to grow a mix of food-producing species, layered in the same way that a forest is. There’s a herbaceous layer at ground level, a shrub layer, and a canopy layer of trees above.

With time, the food forest becomes self-maintaining and, with the appropriate mix of plant species, can have self-renewing fertility.

The top layer of the food-forest garden is the “canopy” layer. Cullen says that they planted this layer with fruiting tree species including cherries, plums, persimmon—and even a hawthorn.

The lower herbaceous and shrub layers, which are still being developed, will be a polyculture—a mix of different plants. Along with edible properties, plants in the lower layers might make available soil nutrients (deep-rooted plants bring up nutrients,) supply nutrients (pea shrubs capture nitrogen from the air,) and attract pollinator species.

Lower-layer plants include bee balm, chamomile, rosa rugosa (for rose hips), strawberreis, and blueberries. Cullen says that this list will grow, as there is still a lot of planting to do in this layer.

Food and Farming Program

The on-campus market garden is part of Durham College’s Food and Farming program, which focuses on urban and small-scale agriculture.

The program has a field-to-fork philosophy. Located on a former industrial site, the market garden produces a variety of vegetables and fruits to supply the on-campus restaurant, Bistro 67.

In addition to supplying the restaurant, the harvest also goes into a community-shared agriculture program (CSA) and farmers market.