By Scar Dickerson, Franklin High School’s The Franklin Post
In the natural world, crops are not in carefully cultivated rows, nor are they pruned and sprayed to ensure maximum yield. Natural ecosystems instead exist in layers, with multiple heights of trees and shrubbery, and layers of vines, groundcover and roots. A “food forest”—a human-tended garden that is a mix between a fruit orchard, medicine garden and berry patch—mimics this sustainable structure, maximizing usable space and yielding edible food. It can be an effective use of space in urban settings while providing a habitat for pollinators and educational opportunities for nearby communities.
“They are a radical decolonization of urban, ecosystem-devoid spaces like lawns and parking lots, which used to be abundant and diverse [ecosystems],” says Dan Sloan, founder and executive director of the Portland Food Forest Initiative (PFFI).
PFFI, which was founded in 2022, is a nonprofit that creates food forests around Portland, replacing grassy or unused outdoor spaces with food-bearing ecosystems. They also distribute free fruit trees for homeowners to plant in their parking strips and offer free fruit tree pruning. Their goal is to establish edible landscaping that replicates the original agricultural style of Native Americans prior to European colonization. Currently, PFFI has created 12 different food forests around Portland—mostly in the Cully neighborhood of NE Portland—and are planning more to follow.
“These sites are community-stewarded and on publicly-accessible land like public school yards,” says Sloan. That accessibility allows the food forests to be used for community-building and education, along with producing food for the students.
One such site is at Oliver Middle School, in the Centennial School District in SE Portland. Melina Maltese, a seventh-grade elective teacher at Oliver, received funding through the Portland Clean Energy Fund (PCEF) for a student-led environmental project. She says her students were interested in creating a food forest, where they could both grow food and support local organisms, sparking their partnership with PFFI.
PFFI visited and worked with the students to design the 8,000-square-foot forest. The project became a community effort, with sixth and seventh grade students, as well as parents and volunteers, spreading mulch and planting more than 200 fruit trees, shrubs, herbs and flowers in April 2025. Many of these plants came from local groups like One Green World and the Portland Nursery.
The food forest, which Maltese calls “both a shared learning space and a shared community resource,” has contributed a lot to Oliver and the surrounding neighborhood. “This project directly led to the creation of an environmental science elective that I now teach,” Maltese explains. The effect of the garden extends beyond the new class. “Kids are getting a lot out of having a food forest on the school’s property, not only educationally, but as a space to be calm and touch plants instead of screens,” Sloan notes.
Sloan says his goal for PFFI is to “establish food forests and systems of stewardship at schools all over Portland as a replicable model to be used anywhere in the world.” The 12 food forests so far are being used as educational and demonstration sites for the communities they are in, and he hopes that their success can model the viability of urban agroforestry in neighborhoods lacking interactive green spaces like community gardens.
Building these multi-layered gardens takes resources, and food forests—though extremely beneficial for communities and ecosystems—by design, do not bring in money. PFFI has been funded by grants from PCEF, the East Multnomah Soil & Water Conservation District, the City of Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services and donations. They hope to secure additional funding that will allow them to continue tending to the food forest at Oliver and providing educational opportunities for students and families in the local community.
Sloan is also working with Centennial Middle School to develop a food forest on their property in the next two years. To get involved, donate or learn more, visit PFFI’s website at pdxfoodforest.org.
Oliver Middle School’s food forest, an 8,000-square-foot area that serves not only as a communal garden, but as a learning experience for the students. Photo by Melina Maltese.
