Longwing 4-H Food Forest
2831 NW 11th Place
The site for the Longwing Food Forest was purchased in January 2017 as a place to teach local youth about nature and gardening, and to provide food for local residents. It has been developed since then, with over 300 trees, including coconuts, bananas, moringa, mulberries, orange, tamarind, kwai muk, curry leaf, hogg plum, barbados cherry, loquat, and longan, as well as chaya, cassava, tomatoes, lemongrass, and many other perennial vegetables.
We sculpted a multi-level terrain with many foot paths in order to create borders and planting areas, and added arches for climbers.
The most important feature of the garden is our mango tree, over 50 years old.
Our permaculture design team helped during the initial stages.
We built hugelkultur mounds to improve the soil and make use of coconut husks we had available.
A Hugelkultur mound using coconuts and landscape debris we had created from trimming the trees on the property.
Bhani with one of the mounds.
Vego beds make a nice entrance statement.
Our lemongrass grew well. Here it is ready to harvest.
We planted passion vine throughout the garden to provide a host environment for the Zebra Longwing and other butterflies. It worked!