Transcript for:
School Food Forest Design Webinar Overview

we will go ahead and get started um thanks so much for being here uh my name is sh perkle I'm the Ed of the school garden support organization Network at the sjso network and you are here at the school Food Forest design webinar where we will be diving into all aspects of design for a a food forest located at a school we've got a great line of us speakers here for you today Debbie Lael and Eddie rinos from the Miami education fund Lany Klein King and Jorge Espinosa of growing healthy kids um in Northern California and um we also if you go to the next slide are co-hosting this webinar today with the national Farm to school network and I'll pass it off to Tomas to introduce himself and the national Farm school network thanks Rana um hello everyone my name is Tomas dogado program manager with the national Farm to school network netw and based in Urbana Urbana Illinois Central Illinois um the national Farm school network serves as a resource hub for school communities and local growers in efforts of promoting nourishing sustainable and local and culturally relevant foods for kiddos in both ECE and K through2 settings um NSN in collaboration with our partners at school garden support organization um are thrilled to uh introduce these opportunities to host more inspiring conversations within our respective networks on the topics and the intersections of aggro Forestry and school Gardens um we hope that this is one of many intentional conversations that we can have on this intersection in addition to the start of a growing collaboration in building more agroforestry resources for school communities around the country and you know while these you know conversations and discussions are not new um they're particular timy timely and and occurring um at a moment where Educators around the country and communities are seeking more creative and tactful ways to address growing concerns around um challenging topics that youth are interested in um touching on food security food accessibility Community trauma and the ongoing impacts of climate change so fortunately we have tools and practices like Agro forestry that can serve as solutions for many of these challenges and um Agro forestry being one of those applications um Food Forest particularly uh will be relevant to today's conversation among many other uh nature-based solutions that communities can adopt to alleviate many of the stress stressors around food inaccessibility and the climate crisis um organizations such as the Savannah Institute or the center for aggr Forestry at University of Missouri um have diligently promoted um the multifaceted benefits of Agro forestry and its various practices with uh Food Forest being one of them and Food Forest uh AGR forestry or sustainable or regenerative agricultural practices are um are integral in the indigenous cultures around the world especially here in present day United States um for Native communities the concept of food Forest aligns deeply with their tradition of sustainable approaches to Agriculture and stewardship and thanks to the traditional ecological knowledge of indigenous foodways we're able to really enjoy many of the Native Foods found in food Forest um within present day Florida Illinois and California which you'll hear more about today um if today's content inspires you to practice Food Forest in your communities I encourage you to to look into these projects and approach them with a sense of Celebration humility and respect for the ecological and agricultural Ingenuity of indigenous uh communities around the country um so without further Ado I'll hand it back to Tristana to introduce our panelists but thank you so much for for allowing us to to have this conversation with you all and um yeah looking forward to it thank you Tomas and thank you for being a thought partner in this in this project and in this this uh overarching topic thanks for sharing um so eloquently this the setting the stage for us um so we'll dive into some housekeeping pieces here um this webinar is recorded So if someone you know um you think would be interested uh you'll be able to find a a copy of the recording in our in the recording library on our website I'll also be in just a couple of minutes here putting a resource handout into the chat this will have all of the relevant links from our speakers today as well as a copy of our presentation slide so I'll put a link to the resource handout in the chat in just a moment this webinar is an hour and 15 minutes so we'll do Q&A in the last 15 minutes as questions come up I encourage you to put them into the Q&A section um in your Zoom you'll see the little panel and a little Q&A um box just go ahead and put your questions in there and at the end we'll be organizing them summarizing them for our panelist to answer and then finally please please share your feedback about this webinar it's incredibly helpful for us to um continue to bring you webinars that are relevant to you in the format and ways in which you find helpful and interesting so would love to would love your feedback at the end of this webinar so you go to the next slide um just want to make sure that you all know um about the growing school garden Summit um just a quick announcement we will be gathering for the second um growing school garden Summit just a a wonderful Gathering for all school garden professionals at any um size or any region we'll be gathering in San Diego from March 15th through the 18th the sgo network is uh one of three main Partners uh supporting um the Sprouts Healthy Communities foundation in this event along with LIF lab um so if you're interested please join us in San Diego so with that I'm going to pass it off to our first set of speakers we have two different organizations sharing with you today so I'm passing it off to the first group the Miami education fund please take it away thank you Tristana for the intro and toas also um and we're extremely excited to be here today um it's amazing to hear that this is um one of the the large webinars that so many people are interested in in learning about food Forest um just to provide some context um my name is Eddie rinos I'm the senior program manager um for the food forest for schools program for the education fund and um I'm here with um my partner in crime Debbie Lael she's the other program manager they call us the twins um so um we've been um you know at this now for just over 10 years um installing Food Forest um the very first food forest in a public elementary school in the nation um was done with funding from the education fund um that was back then when I was in the classroom as a um as an art teacher um so my background is in education and um you know don't let anybody tell you that planting of food Forest um can't turn into a big deal because um you know now now this whole program is is based on food Forest here in Miami Dave County so um Debbie if you want to move on um and let us know a little bit about the size of the program hi yeah so we're our program is in Miami dat County we are currently the third largest School District District in the country um we have over 500 Public elementary schools we service um Gardens and food forests at 71 schools and 30 of those 71 are now uh food forests some of them are still uh edible Gardens that we are in the process of transitioning into the food forest model little by little and then we have over 20,000 students that look learn in our food Forest every school year um Miami Dave county is a very very large land mass area also um and then Eddie yep so yeah there is a lot of um programming with the students that goes along with the food Forest um it's not just a physical Food Forest but obviously you know there's people people involved teachers administrators students um but you know this webinar is to focus more on the design of a food Forest um one of the things over the years that we've worked a lot on is um actually defining what is a food Forest um we've noticed that you know sometimes people were installing um raised bed gardens and and labeling them as food forests and um there wasn't a lot of clarity on that um so it's really important to you know start start from there you know what actually is a food for how do we Define it and over the years how how have we um you know built up and onto that definition so um just uh you know to see if um the audience out there if you have any ideas um I know that for a lot of you food forests are a new thing but when you think of the difference between a raised bed garden and a food Forest what are some words that come to mind how would you define a food forest in your own words um if you could just go ahead and type that into the chat um and yeah I'm seeing somebody wrote already year round um I'm seeing permaculture big yep so um natural takes care of itself perennial species these are all fantastic biodiverse so we're definitely getting a lot of regenerative that's a great word so absolutely all of those things and somebody just put in multistory natives um absolutely all those um pertain to this and um you know we we um wanted a way that that it it would be a lot more clear so that when people are approaching this from a practitioner standpoint and from actually a designer standpoint um that they would have a little bit more of a a road map of how to get there to to actually have a completed Food Forest so um what we've done is we have you know the principles of a food Forest of what makes a food forest and we also have the elements of design so um Debbie if you want to go ahead to the next slide um yeah just to to show you know first of all the spaces that we're starting off with um when we're going to the schools um we do so somebody had put in the comments that food forests are large um yes you definitely need a space it does not always have to be large though um because obviously we work with the spaces that we have um we're lucky enough in um South Florida that every school does have an outdoor space and um the vision for these food force is that every student should have a safe beautiful Outdoor Learning space so um that would definitely be step one you know is is um starting with with a space and then we completely transform those spaces this is what that same exact space with a completed Food Forest um so that's kind of the first thing is that yeah it a food Forest is not like a raised bed garden in that it's a thing that you walk up to it's actually an immersive space and um you know when you're designing an immersive space you have to come up with ways to divide up those different areas and those different spaces so that they're actually functional um and especially since this is in a school um it has to be functional for Education okay so um as far as the principles of what makes it a food Forest as opposed to a raised bed garden I saw a lot of these mentioned in the comments already um somebody had put in perennials um absolutely it's based on edible perennials um so for those of you that are not um sure what perennials are that's just a plant that has a longer than a one-year life cycle so we you know we try to plant things that are going to be continuing to grow year after year after year um so you're not really starting from scratch right like you would in a raised bed garden where you would have to um till the soil rotate crops you know because you're working with annuals and working more with the seasons um it builds habitat so that's another one of the principles um when when you're designing um you're keeping in mind also that yeah when you plant a tree you're creating habitat for Birds um when you're building soil you're creating habitat for you know all the beneficial insects that are going to be living in the soil um when you're planting uh things that are going to bloom your building habitat for pollinators um so that's that's also really important um and um that leads right into biodiversity that goes hand inand with biodiversity so um we never try to do any monocropping you know in in a lot of raised bed gardens you'll see like an entire an entire raised bed where it's like just collar greens and on the next rais bed it will be just lettuce and you know and so on and so on um um we we have what we call planting islands and inside of those planting Islands um we we plant a numerous you know variety of of plants in there so that we're not attracting any any one um pest or or um anyone disease you know to that area by doing that so it's a lot of a lot of interplanting that goes on um and it's multi-layered also which was the the last thing so it's a multi story that was something that somebody also had had put in the in the comments um Debbie did I miss anything before we move on to this next part uh no I think we got we covered everything okay perfect perfect so um yeah then we also have our elements of design so aside from those those four principles um you know that are more about the the EC ecology or ecological principles of a food Forest um we we always um combine that with the the elements of design um so um here before we move on if somebody can think of if you're design if you're going to design a food forest in a school what are some of the things you might want to include in a food forest in a that's you know particularly for a school um somebody said kids okay you want to take kids into mind you know that's something you want to take into mind absolutely because you know safety hazards Etc accessibility to plants walking path these are all things that are coming up up in the chat walkways water sources okay excellent so yeah these are all things that you want to think about excellent so um things like um you know some of the things like that people mentioned in the chat like the people um the kids um you know water sources those are things that would influence you know the way you place things on a design um but they necessarily wouldn't be the elements of your design so that but it does influence where those elements end up um you know so obviously if there's a water source somewhere you need a path leading to the water source for example um and somebody had mentioned the people um we might as well go right into it into the first element which is entrances so absolutely when you're designing you're keeping people in mind um it's it's a space that people are going to be walking through you want to make it inviting right so um it's you don't want people walking around it you want people walking through it and and having um a big open entrance that that funnels into the space that will funnel people into the space um like that example on the left there that's that's one way that you can accomplish that um sometimes people put Gates uh for different safety reasons so again somebody had mentioned keeping kids in mind um um if that's something that in that particular school they feel that they need you know a gate to to only have it open for certain times um but again it's a marked entrance you know that that's a space that you're supposed to enter so just you know by defining an entrance and and you know which also you know doubles as exits for your food force it can be multiple but you want to have those defined not just um you know kind of leave it open for people to decide how they approach the space okay um and that goes right into our pathway so um when when uh we do our Pathways one of the best things to do is when you're designing is to actually observe how people already walk through the space um I'll give an example um when we were installing our very first food Forest um there was a path that you know would lead directly across it because students were always crossing over the grass in that path even though they they weren't supposed to they naturally wanted to because it was a shortcut um to the music room the art room um the the media center so people naturally wanted you know had created these paths through the through the grass in that courtyard so you know why you know go against the grain right if people already are naturally using these as paths you might as well build those into your design um and absolutely um having defined Pathways helps to provide structure so um when you're def you know creating an outdoor space for a school we all know that for students we we absolutely need structure um for doing tours of the space you need that structure and um something a lot of people don't take into mind when they're doing Pathways is the width right because if it's for a public school um you're going to have to do a wider path than normal than than you would normally do like if you were doing rows on a farm um because you want people to easily you know have maybe two ways of traffic going through these Pathways um and sometimes even get them wider than that right so um when when you're adding Pathways to a space it's defining how people walk through it but also what they experience in the space so if it's a narrow path and and then it opens up into a wider space then um it's going to make that space feel even bigger right because they just came from a narrow path into an open space so the combination of narrow and wide is very important for that Deb you want to add to the um what they're seeing there on that picture on the right yeah I'd like to add that you know sometimes with lessons and square foot gardening a lot of times you know the the lesson is focused on the garden box but we've also had students you utilize the pathways for different ways we have lots of chalk that we give out and you can see on the right the kids are doing math on on the uh the pathways and um just yesterday I saw a class they were figuring out square footage of an area with the blocks because they were all a uniform size so um the pathways have M multiple uses and sometimes you just need to look outside the box a little on the lessons yep and just um quick uh bonus about that um you know for the the sake of permaculture um they do double as French drains so um that uh you know those gravel paths that we install like the one on the left they're great you know we we get so much water here in South Florida in in the subtropics um it sometimes rains for days on end um so uh you know it's actually helped us to avoid flooding in the schools to create these paths we did you know deep trenches fill them with gravel and um that's great for collecting the water and and um you know sourcing it back into the roots of the the planting it's also reduced our having to water plants in our drier season because it retains a lot more water yep yep absolutely okay and then um for your Outdoor Classroom so um there's couple different pictures you're seeing here um because it's important to not think of an Outdoor Classroom as just maybe one space you may want to break it up into several spaces so there might be some areas that are for seeding areas um and some other more Open Spaces um where you can actually do demonstrations so we have both you know we we install demonstration areas where you can have an entire class form a circle and that's actually the way that we begin and end every single um lesson outdoors with the students um so having that big wide open space um that's not something you would normally do because people are sometimes thinking about productivity and how much can I grow and how can I maximize the production of my land um but you know obviously this is a school Food Forest and it's it's involves more a lot more um the education aspect and being able to hold discussions and and you know have that Circle where you can demonstrate something in in the center and everybody can participate um so circular areas very important we love to use circular areas for our Outdoor Classroom spaces um and then you can see the that sometimes we also add pavers um and tables seating areas where you can put materials observation areas things for students to use different tools Outdoors um so they can have on those tables magnifying glasses they can write in their journals um so it's different activities so it's very important to think about the activities that you're going to be doing um um now that you're managing a classroom outdoors and Debbie did you want to add anything to The Outdoor Classroom um no just uh the outdoor classrooms help with administrators I know a lot of us have had administrators when the students are out there kind of see it negatively as maybe when the students are in the garden that they're playing that they're not learning by having these classroom Center s types areas um we've found it it's relaxed the administration's you know criticism of the garden areas because they see the students using it as a center the same as they would inside of a classroom yep that's great Point absolutely okay and then um the banana circles um this we see as the Cornerstone um almost symbolic of our food Forest it's like a microcosm of our food forest and um the reason I'm saying that is because it it is multi-layered um in in itself um you know it's one of the planting islands that we have in the center um is a for those of you you if you're not familiar with the system of a banana Circle the center contains a pit and um that pit is dug out and um inside that pit goes all the different clippings from the garden um you know any any um thing that can be composted can go Direct directly in there and the beauty of this is that you don't have to turn it you don't have to you know later remove it from the pit and take it and spread it out you can just leave your compost there where it is in the center and and and grow bananas year round um and Debbie's going to talk a little bit more about you know we know not everybody can grow bananas um but yeah and it is a closed Energy System so again you know bringing permaculture ideas back into it um any way waste from the banana circle is actually not waste because it's composted right back into the system so that closed energy Loop is um you know symbolic of of what we want food Forest to do which is to mimic a natural forest and um Debbie go ahead and and you were gonna add um some other yeah so we're we're lucky enough to grow bananas in abundance here in South Florida um I know we have all different climates here on this webinar so you can also call them compost circles and take the same the same idea behind it and use um for any any plant that you or tree that you might be growing in your climate that um needs a lot of nutrients so bananas are very greedy plants they need tons of nutrients so the compost circles work naturally for them and are fantastic to keep the fruit production growing year round for us but for maybe a more Northern climate you you know you could do a tomato Circle or any any other plant that needs lots of nutrients in order to grow um you know like I tomatoes are amazing because but they do need a lot of nutrients to grow so you can just compost into the center and as long as you make like a horseshoe shape um planting area and leave that Center area for the compost to be put in mostly you know the Brown waste of clippings and whatever we're trimming around the Food Forest it just gets composted in and then students naturally will throw scraps from their lunch but um for the most part it's just waste from the Food Forest that goes into the composting yeah and um just uh tip for anybody that might be interested um one another crop that naturally does grow in a circle like this as a clump um is clumping bamboo and there's a you know ton of varieties of edible bamboos um have to be careful with it because there's running running bamboo that can be invasive um but there you know that's another one that would be great for this type of system because bamboos also you know require a lot of nutrients and we're going to take you on a really quick tour through one of our food forests because like Eddie was saying they are kind of an immersive experience um and it's hard to show from a picture what an actual food Forest is so this is our food Forest at North Miami Elementary here in Miami you can just pay attention to how some of the pathways go from narrow to wider spaces and there's seating areas in there our classroom area yep the multi stories in the planting areas sometimes the C canopy we keep the canopies lower we don't have like 50ft canopies because that adds another whole layer of Maintenance so these trees are around 25 feet Y and that's it um yeah we also want to keep some of the trees like we have Leaf crop trees in the Myrtle families we have all spice and Bay Rum and we want the students to be able to uh Harvest from the canopies and pick the leaves okay okay and then um we just want to really quickly we have a very diverse Community here in South Florida so plants that we source for the food Forest are very well known in the Caribbean in South South and Central America so we um Source plants from and we have informationals that we sent home with the students in Creole and in Spanish for the the different spinaches and herbs and greens that we grow in the in the schools to help disseminate the information to the parents and and we Harvest what's grown in the food forest and we send it out we've given out over 250,000 bags of harvest from the school so far and um I love seeing by the end of the year you have parents that become familiar with what's being sent home and then they start asking for what's growing at the school so yeah we are an international Hub here so these are tropical plants from all around the world um you know but it would definitely look a little bit different depending where you're from yeah so we do have like spinaches from Brazil from Surinam the longevity spinach that we grow is uh typical for um in the Asian continent and uh in the Okinawa spinach obviously comes from Japan so we love sprinkling in some uh geography lessons when the students are out in the food forest and they learn where all these plants different grow and say and this is Eddie and I and contact for information for us yeah us on Tik Tok don't forget we're both both on Tik Tok we have our Instagram up there if you want to see a lot more of the Food Forest we have interactions with students also and um bunch of food Forest tours that we've posted lot of fun content so yeah it would be nice to um to see you there on social awesome and then we're GNA turn it over to our next presenters hey y'all I'm Jorge um tuning in from California from Davis um yeah I wanted to maybe it's a short webinar but I wanted to ask everyone to take a deep deep breath together or two just take in all the all the amazing images and the the beautiful experiences that we've just been presented and uh if we can soften our gaze a little bit or look out a window um and just feel into you know the ecosystems that we are in our own bodies and if we can image a a clearing um you know like after a fire or a landslide or tree that falls you know on sunlight suddenly hits the ground and um visualize the the microbes in the soil starting to shift you know towards more bacterially dominated and the grasses come up with the sun's rays and the extra airation and uh and then you know few months or a year after that then the the woodier shrubby species start to come in and then another layer of Woody comes on top of that and after years and years there's you know like the tree shoots shooting up and uh we start to get these layers of coverage um and then we have a full canopy in the shade again and then another old tree falls and another clearing opens or uh land stewards come in with fire to to preserve part of that grassland for the the grazing species and um you know to improve the production of acorns um another little deep breath we hold that image of of time so we've seen this description of of these beautiful School food forests that are coming up that are being created by this amazing team I'm so grateful to witness y'all's work um and I'm super inspired by it and and I want to bring it back to something that Eddie said um you know that the the the product here isn't just the fruits and the leaves and The Roots um but the learning and and so you know going from from this uh these many examples of school Food Forest to this um project of a Community Food Forest I've been asked to define a Community Food Forest and it's something so undefinable but one thing that I can say is um you know the the the product is so so much more than the the things that we're going to eat from this this food forest or this this edible forest garden and so there's you know the capacity for for stories to to be had and to be tapped into at a community level and I think that that that uh level of community engagement and that uh desired interaction and that desired reconnection uh that desired immersion of the community or the recognition we are immersed in our ecosystem um I think is is uh what might might uh be a way to start to define a project as as big as this um when our principal um when I started to speak to her about what she wanted to see on this landscape this acre of decommission field um I said to her you know Janice the the school is the Food Forest you know the school is the edible forest garden in this most expansive understanding of of succession that we went through in our little visualization um all plants and all you know forms are included in this going from bare uh landscape to forested you know from bacterial and soil to dominated by fungi in the multi-layered uh shaded uh much more moist environment and so um yeah I I I've been asked to define a Community Food Forest and I you know I'm at a loss U but it it it begins at at trying to understand what what we want to do with our community here in this space um so I'll give it to Lany to to talk to uh a little bit of what uh the the dream was and how it came about um and I'll join you all again in a second take it away Lanie thanks Jorge next slide Dey so um my name is Lany and I am the program director for growing healthy kids we are a garden education program in Contra Casta County that's Northern California and um we serve about 17 schools right now um so our primary program is science and nutrition programming during the school day but in 2020 we received some funding to um convert an existing Garden space into um what we would now consider a food Forest adding the components that Eddie spoke to really eloquently the um perennial superfoods and the biodiversity and multi-layered systems so this picture on the right um is a middle school in our district where we currently run field trip programs and the easiest way to start a food Forest is to start converting an existing Garden space um as we did here this was an existing Garden that's been around for about 20 years um several things were already planted there um but adding in the components that um Eddie was speaking to um can convert an existing Garden into a food Forest so that's one way to do it but Jorge and I really wanted to focus on um our Dream which was starting a Community Food Forest from scratch um which we're doing um down the street from Riverview which you see in this picture here and um the way that we did that was um through scrapping together several different funding sources and really building out a dream um that we shared with um the community because it's going to take the entire Community to build it out so um I'm just going to focus a little bit on some of those funding sources um that helped us get started for any of you who are at that beginning point in wanting to start a food Forest as well as tackling some of the the early challenges that might exist for you um so in spring of 2021 um the pandemic was providing uh some opportunities that didn't exist before one of which was green schoolyards of America a fantastic institution um they were providing an emergency schoolyard design volunteer program so Landscape Architects were coming and doing free outdoor site assessments and creating very formal designs that mapped out um outdoor spaces outdoor classrooms and um because we received one of these we really had a blueprint for sharing our vision with school the school district school administrators and community members to help create buyin um and then in the summer the literal seed money that got us started was a whole kids Foundation Grant it was $3,000 which is not a lot to get started on but it was literally enough to um enlist Jorge who's an ecosocial designer to begin designing our food Forest space and getting some extremely drought tolerant um plants into the space before we had any Irrigation in place we are very dry Aid and drought prone climate up here so water is extremely important and in the fall of 2021 uh Cal relief uh which is funded through calire um provided us with a a tree covery Grant which was uh for shade tree planting and that enabled us to also um receive 34 native California trees for our food Forest Area um the rest of our funding and support has come from site funds from the actual Elementary School where we're starting this food forest and the vast majority of that funding has gone toward irrigation supplies and labor next slide please so I'm sure um I've already seen some comments in the chat but I'm sure many of you can think of several challenges to creating a new space so this picture is what we had to work with um which was a just 1 acre decommissioned field on this 14 acre Elementary School site and um that was all we had to work with so um the first step for us was not only creating a design which Jorge got to work on right away and honestly um we would highly recommend um enlisting somebody who's very knowledgeable in permaculture or ecological design to help you get started um at the same time we were educating our school district on what a food forest was what was needed what they were going to be doing and what we were going to be doing we needed a lot of support from our school district with regards to fencing and also to water so this area is extremely prone to vandalism and our school District helped to planul build fencing around this area so that it could be accessed by our garden Educators and community members uh when the School site was closed so that we can maintain the site throughout the summer um and just when school's not in session and we engage the community members literally uh knocking on doors um sending lots of information out to the community about what the Food Forest was and participating in the early stages of creating it and the school district needed to give us our own water source so that the food Forest could be irrigated differently than the rest of the field so those components took over a year to get in place to make sure we had a secure uh site for planting um as well as irrigation which really in our area nothing can be done until the irrigation is in place um and the last year has been spent with putting in um trenching trenching pipes putting in Valves and getting the drip irrigation started so all of those things were um challenges and preparation that had to happen prior to um even being able to put a plant in the ground so Jorge is going to speak a little bit to the design process next next slide sweet thanks Lanie um yeah I wanna you know I want to share this this resource with um with y'all here on the webinar um this this book edible Forest Gardens um can you see it oh no it's being blurred okay there it is um written by uh Dave Jackie and Eric tonm um this little design cycle this design spiral uh comes from uh Dave Jackie's work um and it's it's a very um organic very emergent uh design process and what I love about it is that it puts a lot of these permaculture principles into you know as an example like the principle of obtaining a yield um it puts it into the the context of a of a design process of you know how do we Define what it is that we want in community you know um in in answering this question of you know what do we what do we want uh what do we want to create what do we want to see what do we want to eat um these are things that I I asked uh school um like staff I asked teachers um I was a garden educator at the school for a year and so I was able to ask the students you know to to draw me uh the things that they want to eat and I got to tally those and count out you know 49 watermelons and uh I don't even remember how many apple trees and apples um and to really uh engage people in in this process of of visioning and imaging what what it is that we want to see there you know and um also you know thinking about this this like what is the potential here and potential is one of those uh first principles articulated by um Carol Sanford to Define what regeneration means and so a lot of those that are familiar with with that word um you know there's these first principles of regeneration and one of those is is establishing a potential and so this uh this design process starts there and and constantly keeps coming back there um because there are things that even now a couple of years into the project that are emerging that are like oh this is a need that we hadn't identified and this is a a desire you know of of either the community at the school or even the neighbors you know just recently I met uh a neighbor who's been in the neighborhood for 70 years almost 66 years and I just met him so I want to sit with him you know and try to understand the next uh the next of sort of uh the orange bubble is well what do we have you know um and that often uh in permaculture we use this this tool of uh site analysis and assessment using a scale of permanence and identifying the categories of landscape uh features that are from the most permanent and uh least easily changeable to the the the ones that are most easy to exert um change on or influence on um but yeah what's this story of place you know what is what is absolutely essential uh to this community this landscape this ecosystem what makes it so unique um what is what what is like um what is its its possibility but also in regards to its history and in regards to the the people that embody that history and so um you kind of keep bouncing between what do we have and what do we want you know and from there clear next steps emerge um and designing on paper is part of that can I have the next slide um so you go from designing a concept to designing you know rough schematic to designing uh more detailed design and go to the next slide for a second uh so this was an an early schematic you know just identifying from all of these things that the community was articulating that they wanted you know we had all these outdoor classrooms I think we've were at like six or seven outdoor classrooms for this entire space uh because we wanted you know Outdoor Learning um Native habitat restoration um we wanted uh ecological food production and we wanted Community engagement and that was those were the the overarching goals overarching patterns that kept on coming up over and over that we could group all the things that people kept expressing that they desired under these different things um so the next slide has an evolving detailed design we're still we'll still we're still working working on you know exactly what the the scale is going to be what each of these plantings is going to be because from the detail design which you know this map gives us uh canopy sizes and it's a a a 10 foot to an inch scale that we're using and and so we know we know what's going to go where uh pretty uh pretty much to the foot um by this stage of of uh detail design but then there's patch design and you know what's going to be the the uh understory plantings you know um this uh this book also edible Forest Gardens has a really lovely tool that that um I think is important to share here is the edible forest garden pattern language so all of the things that we've been presented that we've been presenting on uh can be can be summed up as as patterns so you can think of any element that goes into um an outdoor classroom is a is a pattern um any of those elements can be thought of as patterns that interconnect and that that can be uh expressing themselves differently in different schools or in different uh geographies um and so one of those patterns is the the three- layer minimum that you know once you have three layers you don't have to have all five or six layers you know of a of a uh fully stratified Food Forest but once you have three layers like the sis Three Sisters Garden is a really good expression of this uh once you have three layers that three layer minimum is is kind of checked then it a lot of these optimized kind of uh relationships start to uh take hold start to kind of take a life of their own um and express themselves uh as they as they might um in a in a much more symbiotic synergistic way um so the next slide has I think a little rundown of those goals that I mentioned but I've lost the um the slideshow is everybody sorry oh no worries no worries it's all good can take this opportunity to take another deep breath it's really delightful to be here with y'all sorry I don't know what I just keep breathing thanks yeah no worries can go to the the following slide I believe is those overarching goals and so this is something that we keep on going back to you know uh with every every step in the design work as we design you know on paper from the very rough and schematic and conceptual to then going to more and more layers of of uh detail and then taking each patch individually and thinking about it um as as its own little uh ecosystem patch um then we keep on re revisiting these and thinking about them and you know so what does it mean to do Native habitat restoration you know in a in this context where we're respecting the the history and the story of of this of this place you know we've been um uh reaching out to um indigenous communities here in in California we have done work um with uh ecosystem tending and learning traditional eological Knowledge from the Indian Canyon uh folks uh near the Bay Area and uh we're also um connecting to you know some of those um important cultural foods like nopales you know so those very drought tolerant species that Lany mentioned um were you know yakas which are basically cousins of the Joshua tree and have delicious edible flowers that I ate growing up in Honduras and that a lot of my fellow Central Americans that are at this school um have have grown up eating and knowing you know and so nales and yakas were the first things we put in the ground before we even uh had any access to irrigation next slide this is a little rundown of that that a linear model of that uh succession story you know going from barefield to multistratified uh what we might think of more as as a food Forest but when we expand that definition to include the the sense of time uh then of course you know even the grassland between the oats is um is the is the Food Forest so we have a a farm clearing area which is where we're designating you know the uh a kind of uh mimic of uh Copic agriculture is the model developed by ER scotch in in Brazil uh to plant uh all kinds of uh annual agriculture crops in between tree lines and in between uh trees that you are thinning you know to get more sunlight in and uh mulching those branches uh and putting them back in the soil each increment of 1% of organic matter allows you because of the amount of microbial life that you're sustaining in the soil allows you to hold on to an extra 20,000 gallons I think of water per acre or something amazing like that um and so um yeah this this model is really helpful in in understanding that and this this uh this slide is also from edible Forest Gardens but I I also uh want to refer to you know in California we're much more of uh an expression of that Oak Savannah uh kind of U analog and and so we've yeah we've gotten a bunch of uh Post Live and Blue Oaks in the ground and hopefully connecting to the ancestral food ways of you know like the acorn um and um you know everything that happens in between them you know there's all these species uh Mark Shepard in his book restoration agriculture describes that Oak Savannah mimic and uh for every each story um a lot of what we've uh modeled this this food Forest after has been from that that uh uh ecosystem analog of the oak Savannah um next slide yeah so uh this is our neighbor from across the way help helping us install our um uh pressure reducer on our main valve uh that was given to us as a separation from the water source for the school from the district uh and you know just talking over over the garden beds in the little the nursery garden um we uh got to talking with one of the dads of uh one of our kindergarteners well first grader now and uh he he was so excited about the project he's like I have a bobcat that I can lend you and um so he brought over his bobcat and we were able to trench uh 500 feet of of uh piping you know to to put in our irrigation system to get water to all these different uh plantings over time we're using trip irrigation we're also heavily mulching uh we're doing Min swales um with the trencher um just uh perpendicular to to slope to the very very gradual uh slope that we have um to get as much water harvested you know with the little bit that it rains here and to to fire proof as much as we can um yeah next slide yep there he is there's hos and his kiddo on our community workday uh we had a beautiful work day with over 70 volunteers getting about 40 trees into the ground uh and and that's something that we've been you know over the couple years of the project figuring out how to how to best design these these moments for Community come to come together and have enough for everyone to do in a in a way that isn't chaotic and of course it always kind of is but it's also really beautiful um to see people coming together uh the the neighbors walk by and they're like whoa there's trees in there now um and that's been a really delightful thing to to experience um yeah next slide yeah I mentioned you know the previous slide uh speaks a little bit to to those those foodways um and this one too um Lee Clinger is is a person I've been working with for a long time he's an independent scientist who um uh works with indigenous communities you know there's there's a big issue in California you know all over but but really uh a lot of a lot of the times that we have these huge catastrophic fires yes there's you know a level of of uh uh greenhouse effect that's that's involved and changing temperatures and climate volatility and all that but there's also the gross mismanagement of our Landscapes since colonization uh so thanks Tomas for bringing in you know that a lot of times when we are uh you know seeking to implement these these uh um these ways of growing food aren't aren't new they're ancient and they are indigenous technologies that uh have have actually been been suppressed with with the the way that uh this continent has been settled and and so there's there's also the the big opportunity for um you know a more just way of uh being on the landscape and being in community um and and uh giving uh sharing platform and sharing uh our our educational uh places and systems with uh the communities that have carried this knowledge you know of of uh using fire in a healthy way uh there's places where um we are able to bring cultural Burns back you know when when we uh um participate in stewardship of Landscapes being returned to indigenous folks um and there's you know tools like Lee Clinger U fire mimicry uh which is um the man management U way that we use when fire can't quite yet come back to the landscape um but it it also involves you know nutrient treatments uh using the oak tree as as kind of like the Keystone of an ecosystem um and managing their their uh mineral uh access to minerals um calcium and to uh other micronutrients um things that the fire would be doing you you know making those more available um and yeah we even go in and do tree surgeries and and uh address you know uh caners of sub no death um and so this is some of the educational work and some of the cultural work that we we want to do in the food Forest as well the previous slide I think uh we kind of skipped right over can we see it for a second um just before we wrap up the previous one there we go yeah um you know we we uh planted a mini Three Sisters Garden we installed a bunch of irrigation pots and these are these are indigenous Technologies you know and it's really important to uh highlight that in our curriculum and to take take the opportunity of bringing back uh this uh I love the word that Eddie used this immersive way of uh um being in the ecosystem and uh being held and uh immersed in our in our food system uh that also Al encompasses our our educational system in these spaces um celebrating that that uh that cultural tradition uh really trying to build and and articulate and connect to that story of place that that um phrase comes from the the regenerative design work of uh Regenesis group Ben Haggard and pem mang um their book regenerative development and design is also a really amazing resource in this work um and I think with that I I uh can bring it to a close and I think we're going right into a question and answer sesh uh thank you all so much this is really lovely excellent thanks pan IST um so at this point we just want to uplift some of the questions that have come through the Q&A function um I'll touch on some questions that are specific to the education Fund in Florida as well as um um the California specific uh questions but um maybe to start with some some general ones um there was a question there's been a lot of discussion around um Food Forest and just these applications being um relevant to the Eco regions outside of California and Florida um but maybe for both of you all can um um can you maybe speak to just how these applications can lend to different climate [Music] zones uh yeah sure I can I can start off on that um so yeah as far as um applying it to different climate zones it's basically um the the main thing is is to know the plants it's to do a lot of of research on what grows well as a perennial um in that particular Zone um so that that would be number one is to just be you know aware of um what is traditionally grown in in that zone um you know like as I mentioned before it's always easier to not go against the grain um so if there's something that's that you know takes very little maintenance and and will grow you know for several years in an area um sometimes those are not the best commercial crops and that's why we don't necessarily learn about them um commercially uh so it's important to just kind of do a deep dive into you know what do the native communities in that area what have they been doing over the years um you know what were people doing for food before supermarkets in that area and um you know start to bring those plants back into into um you know our just our our own um ideas and communication and into our lives our daily lives great thank you sure um next question U maybe these are a set of questions more specific to just the relationship with students and the school cafeterias um of your campuses but um the first one being do you include children in the Planning and Building phase um so for for for us um we only get a general idea of you know what is mostly needed at the school um you know it it depends people do design differently um for us what we've come to um see is that sometimes people don't know what they want um because they don't even know too much about food Forest so you kind of have to sell them some ideas also but it it is good to get you know a general idea of the needs of the school you speak to that a tiny bit also uh as as a garden educator I was always dancing um with what what the teachers uh expect you know the kids love to get their hands dirty they love to mulch um and and and sometimes you know these things come up of like well are we engaging are we using children as free labor and I think that's a that's a very tough question to negotiate with because um and and one of the one of the answers that I that I give to that is well if the teachers myself included are able to work shoulder-to-shoulder with them and not you know stand above them as supervisors then it it feels like it's not extracted um and as long as we are able to connect to the educational pieces you know what is the science behind what we're doing what does mulch do for soil like water retention and for microbial life then it's different you know it's not it's not uh just putting the kids to work um which which was something that that some of the some of the teachers that that were more reluctant to you know get on their hands and knees and weed and mulch with the kids uh were were worried you know and I I would just encourage them to you know get shoulder-to-shoulder get working with them and and and make make a game of it and play and ALS so learn while you're doing it and and so yeah the education piece and the ability to work shoulder-to-shoulder with the kiddos I think those are two two ways in which I can speak to engaging the children in in the work of building a food Forest yeah and just to just to add to that that you know students were an integral part of the design of our food Forest so they actively contributed both drawings and just input into the foods that they wanted to eat so not only are they helping to plant but they were really integral in the design process great um next question uh can you address the safety issues are kids allowed to enter during recess on their own um concerns around nut allergies or just allergies in general um and then maybe just uh to follow that up how are some of the foods that are produced Within These uh sites Incorporated and integrated into school cafeteria um yeah so that was like three questions can you repeat that sure yeah um just maybe touch on just general concerns around allergies and um how kids are just able to I mean are kids permitted to you freely forage the food on their own and harvest on their own um and then how are these foods incorporated into the um school cafeteria once produced yeah I I can I can take uh so we really haven't had any allergy issues I mean they're not prepared foods it's we do not grow any kind of peanuts or nut in our food forest and we are very um thoughtful in the plant selections that we put in um and we do a lot of work with the students while they're out there doing lessons we do explain all of the plants to the kids um and and generally taste and eat them I mean we just kind of encourage them to eat leaves as they walk in the the Food Forest so um if they're hungry they can just eat some leaves and they know which ones they can eat which ones are more herbs and you know nobody wants to chout out Cub oregano yeah a lot of that is up to the teachers you know the teachers um if they if they want the students doing that um they they know how to provide that type of structure for the classes um but it's important to see it as just like any other area of the school you know like students shouldn't be just randomly wandering in the art room and you know using the art supplies or the the music supplies you know it's the same thing you know if if they have a class um that's scheduled um for the food Forest that's when they're out there um you know so there's a lot of structure and scheduling that goes behind that to keep it organized um and then as far as the cafeteria we've worked really closely with our food and nutrition Department here in Miami Dade um the the food and nutrition officer actually created procedures that are in the main procedure book for the cafeteria managers that outline uh very simple procedures but uh outlines how to use what's being used in the in the food forest in the cafeterias um and we also went through the main recipe book and put optional Garden cafeteria items on every recipe that the cafeteria managers use so we've tried to cut down as much red tape as possible I mean course we're constantly trying to train and and encourage the cafeteria managers to go outside and be familiar because you know every year there's a new new people in the system so we're always uh trying to encourage everybody cafeteria managers as well out into the Food Forest can say a little bit also about you know our program growing healthy kids uh every um every class uh the all the kids do a tasting uh and it's it's facilitated and there's a process for it and so one of the one of those goals you know of how do we go you know grow all this ecological food is like well the yield that we need to obtain is actually like enough food for tastings uh year round you so so it is definitely connected to how how we're thinking of what we plant and the divers Verity of what we plant the timing of it um and yeah we haven't we haven't quite worked out how we're going to connect the school cafeteria because they produce a lot of waste that we could compost and we could certainly grow a lot of food that they could serve up to the kiddos so that's definitely in the in the works for us too excellent um next question who manag the food for us during the summer months so when the kids are away do you all have a a system of just continuing the the stewardship and and the nurturing of the of the sites yeah I can speak to our food forest in that we have dedicated Garden Educators at our site um Jorge is really acting as a food Forest Steward right now in its implementation phase um but at all of our sites we have a dedicated Garden educator that's tasked with the summer garden maintenance however we spoke to the fact that we're drought prone and have very hot summers where we are so um there's been an extensive amount of work on the drip irrigation to make sure that it's as self- sustaining as possible without a lot of Need for somebody to be coming in and watering or caring for it over the summer months and yeah that's a great point because for us you know I'm so glad we're doing with two different um areas um we have the exact opposite you know during the summer that's our rainy season so we get tons of rain in the summer we don't have to do any irrigation at all like everyday rain um so for us it's really you know things start to grow kind of over grow um so we do have still you know a team of people going regular regularly um there are our food Force Educators um that work also with the students throughout the year and they they help to do some maintenance you know keeping things trimmed and we do quarterly um we have a landscaper that you know he's certified to go into the schools um to do coding by machine so he can handle some of the canopy maintenance and stuff like that and then we just pray we don't get hurricanes great well thank you all so much for sharing all of your important work with with this network um it's been just such a joy to hear about you know how you all are approaching this work and what you're hoping for the future so um on that note I'm going to hand it back to Tristana to close us out hi everyone thank you so much for being here um I'm want to say a special thank you to our uh co-presenter uh NSN National Farmers school network in Tomas and thank you so much to our presenters Eddie Debbie Lany and Jorge for sharing your incredible knowledge and just thank you for all the work that you do it's it's truly inspiring I think that that um the chat and the IM immense amount of questions is a huge Testament to that of um how exciting and engaging this topic is and how you know engaging you all have been and sharing the information so thank you um I will say I would love all of your feedback our attendees thank you for being here and thank you for sharing your amazing resources in the chat you shared so many resources that I'm actually going to update the resource handout with additional resources that you all shared so so thank you for modeling that um I should have said that at the beginning um I will be adding those to our resource handout and we'll send it all send it out to everyone who has registered for the webinar so you'll get an updated resource handout with a compilation of as many as the resources that I can glean from our chat um so you'll get that and then um please uh share your feedback via our survey would we really appreciate would love to know um what other topics in Rel in relation to school Gardens that you would like to learn for future webinars we might just have to do school Food Forest Part Two based on how much engagement and excitement there has been about this topic awesome well thanks everybody for being here we'll go ahead and close out this webinar and um hope to see you in a future Zoom room have a good rest your everyone Forest thank you bye