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Sustainable Urban - Food Forest

Growing food, beauty, habitat, and outdoor learning at DMACC Des Moines/Urban!

Food Forest Map

What is a Food Forest?

Food forests (forest gardening) are gardens that mimic natural forests, producing crops and edible plants for people and wildlife.
These multi-layered ecosystems are an important cornerstone of permaculture​.

Permaculture is a holistic approach to land management that works to mirror natural ecosystems, integrating land, resources, people and the environment through mutually beneficial synergies or relationships. It's a way of tending to the land with a focus on minimizing waste and holistic solutions. By working with nature rather than against it, permaculture practitioners can develop closed loop, self-sufficient systems; like those in natural ecosystems. By using these principles to design your use of land, you can increase diversity, stability and resilience of your ecosystem. Permaculture is applicable in urban and rural contexts and can be done at any scale.​

​Observing nature and then designing a system in a way that allows nature to do much of the work for you.

Biomimicry mimics strategies found in nature to solve human problems.  It is the design and production of materials, structures and systems that are modeled on biological entities and processes. 

Resources

The benefits of permaculture affect not just humans but the environment and wildlife as well. A main goal of permaculture is to leave the Earth in better condition than it was found; in contrast to conventional farming, which is focused on maximum production at high costs to biodiversity. Permaculture works to maintain and even improve scarce and often non-renewable resources by replenishing soil nutrients, slowing water and soil run-off, supporting diversity of animal and plant species, and creating an overall resiliency in the system.​

DMACC's Food Forest is a place where students, instructors and the public can slow down, take a stroll and immerse themselves in revitalizing time in nature. Studies show that time in natural environments can reduce stress and increase one's sense of wellbeing.

Additionally, college campuses, including DMACC campuses are places of food insecurity. DMACC's Food Forest not only produces highly nutritious food available for all to enjoy, but also helps educate students about ways they can produce their own food in a localized system, free from centralized production. And, this can be done, even in small urban spaces like patios, rooftops and apartment balconies.

DMACC's Urban campus is the most diverse campus in the state of Iowa, with students from over 60 nations. The average age of students is 29 years old, many have families, and many are economically disadvantaged. Through this project, we can help all of our students, faculty, staff, and campus visitors learn more about our natural heritage and ways to feed our families and our Earth.

DMACC is proud to employ the principles of permaculture to help create vibrant, healthy, and productive communities through reconnecting humans to nature in regenerative ways.

 

More About the Food Forest

The Urban Food Forest has a wide array of plantings. Here is a list of what's growing.

  • apple trees​
  • asparagus​
  • beets
  • berries
  • chard
  • comfry
  • cucumbers
  • eggplant
  • herbs
  • kale
  • lettuce
  • melons
  • mushroom logs with spores
  • okra
  • onions
  • onions around trees​
  • peppers
  • rubarb
  • squash
  • strawberries
  • tomatoes​

Beekeeping

HoneybeesThe DMACC Food Forest includes beekeeping. Ap​is mellifera a​re a critical component to a healthy ecosystem, economy and even a healthy diet.

Over 80% of the world's flowering plants rely on pollinators such as the honeybee to reproduce, this includes many of our agricultural crops. 

DMACC Urban has hosted campus honeybees for over ten years.  Our bees pollinate the plants in our prairies and food forest.  They are also an amazing hands-on teaching and learning tool.  Over the years, students have participated in beekeeping duties from the installation of new hives to the extraction and processing of honey. Proceeds from honey sales support our beekeeping program.
 
DMACC Urban is working towards Bee Campus USA status, a certification from the renowned and respected Xerxes Society.  This certification recognizes pollinator and conservation efforts at colleges and universities, and includes the creation of pollinator habitat as well as community outreach and educational programming​.
 
Pollinators, such as honeybees, are tremendously important.  Without pollinators, the 
ecosystems of the Earth would collapse.  80% of crop plants require pollination by animals.  Flowering plants produce breathable oxygen, and purify water.  They prevent erosion and support culturally significant plants.  The end of pollination would quickly lead to the end of the human race.
 
Unfortunately, pollinators are on the decline.  Urbanization destroys critical habitat.  Pollution, the misuse of chemicals, and changes in climate are all contributing to shrinking pollinator populations.  Luckily, it isn’t too late to save our pollinators.
Beekeeping can help, but honeybees aren’t the only pollinators at work on the flowers.  In fact, honeybees are not even native to the United States!  Birds, bats, moths, butterflies, flies, beetles, wasps, small mammals, and native bees are all important pollinators. Iowa alone has somewhere between 300-400 native bee species.  Because honeybees are social, domesticated pollinators, they can compete with native pollinators in areas where plant resources are scarce.  With this in mind, we are mindful of the number of hives we keep here on Urban campus, and are monitoring the health of our native pollinator populations as well as that of our domesticated bees.
 
Learn more about how you can help support pollinators by visiting Sustainable Urban - Urban Prairie Native Landscaping

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