This site explores the growing trend of fruit and nut trees in cities around the world, or "urban food forestry". Urban food forestry takes many forms including public orchards and food forests, community fruit harvesting groups, and urban fruit mapping. The planting, mapping, and harvesting of tree crops in urban areas provides a cost effective and scalable approach to improving the resilience of our cities and communities through improved food security, social capital building, and a wide variety of ecosystem services. It is distinct, yet complementary to, other popular forms of urban agriculture such as allotment gardens and urban beekeeping. The objective of this website is to consolidate and disseminate information on urban food forestry to researchers, municipalities, and individuals who are interested. Thanks for visiting!
Clark KH and Nicholas KA. 2013. Introducing urban food forestry: a multifunctional approach to increase food security and provide ecosystem services. Landscape Ecology
Poe MR, McLain RJ, Emery M, and Hurley PT. 2013. Urban Forest Justice and the Rights to Wild Foods, Medicines, and Materials in the City. Human Ecology 41(3):409-422
McLain R, Poe M, Hurley PT, Lecompte-Mastenbrook J, and Emery MR. 2012. Producing edible landscapes in Seattle's urban forest. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 11:187-194
Update 8/8/2013: Some of the below links are currently broken, but they will be up and running soon.
An ongoing compilation of urban fruit tree planting, mapping, and harvesting initiatives. Last updated April, 2013
Information on urban fruit tree species, with links to databases and matrices to assist municipalities and decision makers
Policy documents, templates, and other resources related to the legalities and logistics of urban fruit trees
Information on the design and implementation of urban fruit tree plantings (food forests, forest gardens, agroforestry, permaculture, edible landscaping, etc), including landscape architecture examples and book resources
A few free guides and resources on putting together a community urban fruit harvesting group or planting an urban orchard
A collection of books pertaining to the theory, design, and practice of food forestry, forest gardening, agroforestry, permaculture, urban agriculture, food-centric urban design, and more