Mother Earth News tells us how to turn our lawns into food forests. Let’s do it!

Saturdays that could be spent harvesting berries and fresh greens are instead consumed in the toil of pushing a machine. Unless you are an avid yogi, baseball player or picnicker, lawns are a bit passé. And yet, we as a nation spend over $26 billion per year on lawns. How might we redesign our spaces to create edible abundance? …

A food forest has multiple layers which are able to coexist. Rather than have just the main fruit tree crop, a food forest is designed to have an upper story (large fruit trees), and secondary upper-story (dwarf fruit trees) a shrub layer (berry bushes) an herb layer (leafy greens and veggies) and a ground cover layer (strawberries and low herbs). In this way, one creates a dynamic polyculture that has diverse crops in production. This makes sense if our intention is to grow for our own community.

A food forest also plants the fringes. The gaps between production plants are great areas for nitrogen fixing beans and peas. These plants feed the soil and create a living mulch. The marginal areas can be planted in flowers and pollinator attracting native plants, serving as magnates that attract beneficial insects into the garden.