Festival Beach Food Forest

As a recipient of a City of Austin Urban Forestry storyteller fellowship, I photographed and interviewed community members who played an advisory role regarding the expansion of a food forest located in the Holly & East Cesar Chavez neighborhoods. The experimental pilot project transformed 2/3rds of an acre of city park land into an edible forest garden where visitors can openly forage and enjoy fresh food. With plans to expand, the Festival Beach Food Forest (FBFF) will use my photos and interviews as one of many tools to guide their next phase of regenerative design and community building.

“Nobody on the east side wanted a food forest because it was coming from a white woman. And this was when there was a lot of pressure from gentrification. We were losing our houses, all the white businesses were coming in and taking over. All of that. So, nobody wanted it except PODER (People Organized in Defense of Earth and Her Resources) because five years prior we tried to create a food forest at Oaks Spring Preserve, which we rescued from the bulldozers. And at that time the city said, ‘oh no, we couldn’t do that [the food forest] because of the liability.’ So I don’t know if time had passed or it was because a white person was asking. Because that’s a reality. So, the city said, ‘well, we’ll consider it.’ PODER was the first group to support the idea. We as PODER have been advocating for fruit bearing trees and plants to be planted everywhere." - DANIEL LLANES, Neighbor + Community Activist

“I am a Conchero, an Aztec spiritual dancer, and that’s part of our culture. When the food forest opened, they asked us to do a blessing to the land and to the event and to the initiative. So we did.” - DANIEL LLANES, Neighbor + Community Activist

“I think it’s important to be part of nature. Nature provides everything for us but since the coming of the Europeans to the Americas, we’ve lost 90% of our forest in the United States. Me being a Red Path person, integrating and being a part of nature is where it’s at. Five hundred years of creating monocultures is very unnature-like. Nature is diverse as hell, you know? So for me, the food forest represents getting back in touch with the Mother. The Earth. The sky. And the abundance that it gives us.” - DANIEL LLANES, Neighbor + Community Activist

LORI RENTERIA, Community Activist + Coordinator for the Tejano Trails, a walking tour that honors the history, diversity, and cultural assets in East Austin

“I think fundamentally we're taking what was a monoculture, what was just grass, and we've turned it into a very biodiverse piece of land that's rebuilding soil, that's rebuilding our aquifer by pulling water down. And that's rebuilding human connection to nature and also creating totally free food access on public land, which is so important. For me, I believe, the land, the water, the air, are all community commons, they’re all these things that belong to everyone and everything, and that we have gone really far down the rabbit hole of commodifying and parceling up, especially land for profit and private gain and private use. So to use a public space for the public good is for me, sacred work, it's restoring the public commons in a way that's creating abundance, creating economic justice and environmental justice." - ALY THARP, Festival Beach Food Forest Outreach Leader

“I like the trails and the orderliness of the food forest. I like the birds. It’s my place to walk after I walk in my garden.” - XIU LEE, RBJ Resident + Gardener. Translated by her daughter Elisa

“The reason I was in favor of the food forest was because I remember as a kid growing up in Austin, we used to go to all the public spaces, public parks. And we’d pick pecans, which are all over East Austin, throughout Austin. I remember as a kid picking pecans and thinking, ‘wow, cool. You can pick pecans and have something to eat for free from the public spaces.’ I remember we used to pick them, some we would keep for ourselves, and a lot of them we would sell to the fruit stands over on Bolm Rd and Airport near Govalle Park. We sold them because that’s what we did to buy candy and stuff as kids. And I just thought when the food forest approached us and talked about how they wanted to build this food forest with an abundance of fruit trees on a public space, I said, ‘wow that is so cool.’ And I brought that up to city hall when I went to speak on their behalf.” - JULIO PEREZ , Site Manager for Festival Beach Community Garden

KAREN LUZIUS, Permaculture Gardener + Festival Beach Food Forest Volunteer

“The gardening itself got me out of my depression, I was completely just lost. Getting back to the ground and digging, all those bad thoughts that I had and all the depression that I was in, the gardening got me out of it. I started socializing with the gardeners around here. I feel like gardening took me from really bad health to really good health. I mean, I used to walk with a cane, and I'm not walking with one anymore. I'm eating a lot healthier. I like getting involved with people. I like being involved in my community." - JULIO PEREZ , Site Manager for Festival Beach Community Garden

“I'm really drawn to the food forest model and the gardens in general, because for me it has always been a really soothing space. And these are spaces where I learned about food and I learned about my family's history. And so I really value gardens for that reason, for the cultural connections that I feel when I'm in an outdoor gardening space. And I want more people to have that experience of being able to casually encounter fruit trees and nut trees. Within Austin, the other thing I really like about the food forest is that there are a lot of fruit and nut and edible plants that people don't always recognize even though they're all around us. Like, right now, we're sitting and we're surrounded by pecan trees and some people don't even recognize what a pecan looks like outside of a grocery store. So it's also a really great place for people to be able to reconnect with the plants that are around them, things that they might not have recognized as being part of an edible landscape.” - JENNIFER STEVERSON, Parks Department Community Garden Specialist

“It almost is like a demonstration garden. Like if you want to think about it in USDA terms, it really serves as a model and an example and it's easily accessible. The other important part about the forest is that there's no gate around it and there's no fence. So even if you're not a member, even if you're not actively involved, you can still explore the space without having to ask somebody for permission. And I think that's a really key part of how the garden is able to reach people. It really allows for self exploration and it really blends into the surrounding landscape.” - JENNIFER STEVERSON, Parks Department Community Garden Specialist

“I like the value that we can place on city trees because they're worth so much more than the wood they produce. Trees in a landscape that get planted, you know, here's a memorial tree. Here's a tree that we planted with our kids when they were little. You can attach so much memory to a tree in these city spaces, and then they turn around and stay there and they do their thing and they provide shade and they provide habitat and sometimes they provide food.” - EMILY KING, Urban Forester for the City of Austin

MITCH WRIGHT, Landscape Architect + City Planner

“I think it's direly vital for us to think about the next generation. How is what we're doing on the planet today going to affect the rest of time? And then when you're thinking about this specific model of the food forest, this might be here thousands of years later, even if we disappear. I saw this article the other day of this food forest in Canada that they don't know how old it is, but it was definitely created by an indigenous tribe many hundreds of years ago. And it's still there. It's still going, still making food, still making medicine, and they haven't even touched it. And the reason that it's able to thrive for so long is because we're mimicking nature and mimicking the seven layers plus of a real forest that you would find. But we're replacing a lot of those layers with more food and medicine that are beneficial for humans and wildlife, too.” - TAELOR, Co-Director of Austin Permaculture Guild

I just love the food forest because it’s free and it’s public. And people can come any time they want. And it’s really a prime example of permaculture design. You have the berms and swales. You have all the perennial food everywhere and the natives. It’s not only a place where people can come to see what’s happening. On a regular basis, people can come and participate. People can come and learn how to do these things and start their own little projects. It’s really a community garden, permaculture style. We don’t have plots, but you can come plant things if you wanted. And of course you can come harvest food. And that’s really the biggest goal that’s not quite there yet because perennial food takes a long time to produce food, but once it does start producing food, it’s going to be insane. There’s just going to be such an abundance of food for free for whoever is available to come and take it.” - TAELOR, Co-Director of Austin Permaculture Guild