The Food Forest Project

Aim: We aim to help reduce food poverty, increase tree cover, habitat and biodiversity, through community assisted regenerative agriculture.

My name is Tristan, and I founded the Food Forest Project in June 2018. By day, I work for a local authority as a project manager designing and building schools, hospitals, and community centres, and by night, along with a dedicated group of volunteers, I run the Food Forest Project. The team and I fervently believe that many social and environmental issues can be solved by the way we produce food. So, we started the Food Forest Project in recognition of this, helping local communities suffering from food poverty to build regenerative and agroecological food systems, such as food forests, forest gardens, and organic market gardens. 

We do this by working with local landowners, both private and public, to open up areas of discussed land, raising funds, working with communities in designing a system that best suits their needs, and then planting and building the designs. Since our lunch in June 2018, we have planted four community food forests and forests gardens, with a fifth due on November this year, and build a small organic, and regenerative market garden, with poly tunnel, fruit cage, raised beds, compost loo, little education and wellbeing centre, and picnic area. The produce grown in the market garden is grown by local people, and sent to the local food bank on Mondays. 

Our vision is to have a regenerative agricultural system in every community in Somerset, Bristol, and BANES, where we live and work, supporting local food banks, and local people suffering from food insecurity, lack of community, lack of access to nature, and lack of biodiversity.

The money raised in this Crowdfunder will help us to set up an organic allotment space adjacent to a forest garden we planted in December 2021. The site is situated within a working class estate in a. small town in Somerset where over 1200 people submit using the food bank, and live in high rise flats with little outside recreational space.