A food forest in every town?

By 2028, the Martha’s Vineyard Commission wants you to be able to pick your own fresh fruit at a local “food forest” — a perennial, public foraging space blooming with fruit trees or berry bushes.

Thanks to a state grant, landscape designer Mary Sage Napolitan has been working on what she calls the M.V. Food Forest Toolkit, a guide for identifying public lands for these areas as well as recommended species and best practices.

Napolitan says that each of the forests should measure at least 1,500 square feet, with at least three fruit trees and other plants.

The project gets to the root of issues that commission staff and state officials are excited to address, she told The Times.

“The [state] MVP grant is really geared toward climate change adaptation and preparedness,” she said. “This was that the Vineyard specifically is really vulnerable to climate-caused food insecurity, due to the possibility of a lot of our infrastructure and obviously transportation being vulnerable to some of climate change’s effects, like major storms and flooding.”

Other than support from the grant, totaling $100,000 for Napolitan’s work and site planning for a food forest in Aquinnah, Island planners at the commission have had their sights on this project for several years. Public, perennial foraging spaces in each town was set as a goal for 2028 in the Island-wide Climate Action Plan.

This is because bolstering Vineyarders’ year-round food supply could help out in an emergency, Napolitan said, noting that the Island currently only has one or two days’ worth of food if cut off from the mainland.

She also said that perennial food forests could help Islanders fight food insecurity, increase shares of native plants, and sequester more carbon from the atmosphere, helping towns feed people as well as do their small part to mitigate climate change.

Once the toolkit comes out in June, Napolitan said, it will be up to each town to decide what exactly their food forest or forests will look like, who will run them and with what rules, and how to pay for them. Further funding could come from the state MVP team.

“Each town will end up being different depending on energy and enthusiasm,” she said.

Once the toolkit is released, private parties could also learn how to create food forests. Napolitan noted the M.V. Land Bank as a group that she wanted to reach out to for future planning.

The MVP grant of $100,000 covers Napolitan’s research, but it also includes funding for site design of a food forest on already identified land behind Aquinnah Town Hall.

So far, Aquinnah is ahead of other towns when it comes to actually creating a food forest. Officials in September 2023 heard plans for the  space, and planners listed grapes, blackberry, and wild garlic as potential plants. Juli Vanderhoop, a select board and IGI board member, also noted that the space could be used to teach Wampanoag foraging practices. Aquinnah’s forest would likely involve the town issuing a request for proposals for an organization to manage the forest, Napolitan said.

The M.V. Charter school also opened the Vineyard’s first food forest in September.

As Napolitan is looking for the best public locations for food forests in each town, she encouraged anyone knowledgeable to email her at mscneld@gmail.com. She also plans to appear at the M.V. Museum’s annual Earth Day event in April and organize public presentations in the spring.