On a hot August afternoon, Chris Freeman sits at a table under a tree waiting for a friend to join him for a game of chess. He’s walked over to Uphams Corner Food Forest in Dorchester from his adjacent home in what has become a daily ritual since he stumbled upon the park a few months earlier.
“You walk out of here and it’s hot, but here in the shade you have all these trees blocking the sun," Freeman, 55, says. “It actually changes your mood. As soon as I got close to the park I started smiling.”
Uphams Corner is one of 10 parks in the Boston Food Forest Coalition, a nonprofit organization that works with neighborhood associations and the city to turn vacant lots into food forests, also known as edible parks.
“I grew up in Dorchester my whole life and we didn’t have stuff like this,” Freeman says, gesturing to the garden and streets beyond. "These used to be empty lots with trash and places no one wanted to visit.”
What’s happening in Boston is part of a larger movement to address climate change, biodiversity loss, the lack of access to affordable healthy food, and a general lack of green spaces in cities — all of which affects the health of residents.
by Jaimie SeatoN
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Organizations and residents unite to transform previously defunct neighborhood spaces into multi-use parks and gardens ripe for healthy activity.
At Old West Church’s Food Forest, Karen Spiller — amongst other gracious volunteers — bask in the warm sunlight, joke around lightheartedly, tend to blooming flora, and simply enjoy mother nature’s priceless gifts (below). Chris Freeman relaxes at Uphams Corner Food Forest (right).
Fueling the community
Food forests, which are designed to be self-sustaining, use a multilayer design incorporating trees, shrubs, and groundcover that optimizes land use and mimics natural ecosystems. It’s estimated that there are roughly 85 food forests in the United States.
Six of the parks in the Boston Food Forest Coalition are part of their land trust, which protects the land from development. The remaining parks are owned by other parties, but they work in partnership with and are supported by the Coalition.
“The mechanism of the land trust allows community members to control the spaces,” explains Hope Kelley, manager of communications for the organization. “Boston Food Forest Coalition technically owns the land but it’s a community asset. We take over the parcels from the city of Boston and they’re owned by the land trust in perpetuity — as opposed to being a resource that stays in the city of Boston’s control and could later be developed into something that is not green space.”
All of the parks in the Boston Food Forest Coalition began as local community initiatives before partnering with the Coalition, and Kelley stresses that community groups are actively consulted in the designing and building of each site. The parks are then maintained by volunteer stewards, with support from Coalition staff members.
“They’re all unique because each community group is unique, with different ambitions and they know what the neighborhood needs,” Kelley says. “For instance, Savin Hill Wildlife Garden wanted less focus on edible species and more on being a pollinator garden and a park for people.”
The logistics behind Boston’s equitable solution
Kathleen Robinson stands as a proud park steward of the Leland Cooperative Garden, a thriving urban oasis nestled in the heart of the Jamaica Plain neighborhood. She poses with a sign reading “Bee Aware” to remind visitors of the garden’s vital role in nurturing pollinators and fostering biodiversity.
Building an urban oasis
When Kathleen Robinson, 82, and her partner bought their home on Leland Street in 1983, she says the city had largely given up on the Jamaica Plain neighborhood, which was plagued by absentee landlords. Now a park steward, Robinson recalls the three vacant lots that are now the Leland Community Garden as a neglected space holding several abandoned cars and years worth of construction waste.
“A lot of the neighbors around here said, ‘Don’t go out there, it’s dangerous,’” Robinson says, taking a break from her work in the garden. “But we looked out our window at the lots and said, ‘it looks like our front yard, I think we’re going to go out and clean it up.’”
Pretty soon, neighbors joined in the effort, which led to community discussions about what to do with the newly-cleaned space. Thanks to their efforts, the lots were purchased by a land trust so that the space could be developed into a public garden. A grant from the city allowed the community to hire a local landscape architect in 1989.
Today, the garden is a green oasis, with fruit trees, vegetable beds, herbs, honey bees, composting, and a colorful flower garden, and those vacant lots are a place of peace and nature, with birds and animals.
From vacant lots to visionary gardens
Another story of neighborhood revitalization is that of Jessie Dambreville. As a child in Mattapan, Dambreville used the vacant lot next to her family home as a shortcut and the lot was still sitting empty when she moved back to Mattapan 30 years later in 2016. She was thinking about buying the lot and turning it into an urban farm when she got involved with the neighborhood association and learned that the city had approached the neighbors about creating a garden.
“A subcommittee of the neighborhood association met with Orion Kriegman, [Executive Director of the Coalition] who told us what a food forest was and if that was possible in that space, and it really just started from there,” says Dambreville, who is now a steward of the Edgewater Food Forest and a Coalition board member.
“What I hear from everyone is how excited they are to learn about the park. They're excited when I tell them we have a projector and we plan on having movie nights and that we’re trying to get a yoga instructor to do yoga classes. The way we designed the space is for it to have multiple uses,” Dambreville says.
Clockwise from top left: Volunteer Apolo Catala plants a seedling in the Old West Church Food Forest; Tyrome Thomas Jr., manager of education, stewardship, and measurement for the Coalition; a group of freshly harvested garlic bulbs sit beside a pair of garden pliers; Tyler Carpe plays frisbee in the park with his dog, Maisy.
Growing together
Orion Kriegman
Executive Director of the Boston Food Forest Coalition
“We want to make sure that people in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color also have access to nature.”
Peter James
Harvard Medical School associate professor of population medicine at the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute
Green spaces in Boston are blooming: Here’s what it means to Bostonians
In a 2023 report from the Trust for Public Land, Boston ranked 10th out of the 100 largest American cities for its public parks. The ranking is significant because there’s overwhelming evidence that spending time in natural areas is beneficial for mental and physical health.
Separate research shows that green space in cities has the potential to reduce crime and decrease gun violence. In the words of Peter James, Harvard Medical School associate professor of population medicine at the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, “It's not about exposure to nature in terms of going off to the woods. It's really about incorporating nature into cities, into everyday life, and that's where we see the biggest health benefit.”
Boston also earned a perfect score of 100 for access — meaning 100 percent of residents live within a 10-minute walk of a park. However, the report did find an area for improvement. Its results showed that residents in low-income neighborhoods have 19 percent less park space than high-income neighborhoods, and residents in neighborhoods of color have 12 percent less park space than white residents.
“Green space is not distributed equitably across the US or even across Boston,” says Peter James, Harvard Medical School associate professor, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute. “We want to make sure that people in low income neighborhoods and communities of color also have access to nature, and that will help to decrease health disparities and decrease disparities that we'll see in terms of climate change and extreme temperatures.”
In Boston, a park for one is a park for all
While retaining their individuality, all the parks in the Coalition have a shared goal: to increase access to nature in Boston, particularly in neighborhoods that have traditionally lacked such access. The parks are open to the public — anyone can freely pick the available fruit, vegetables, herbs, and flowers. This system and the philosophy behind it stand in stark contrast to community gardens, where individuals rent a small plot of land and tend to it themselves.
“We create a park and anyone can go in and get exactly what they need and it’s unobtrusive. A person can be homeless and go pick an apple or I can be walking in with my niece from my home two streets over and pick that same apple, and we’re on equal ground,” says Tyrome Thomas, Jr., 41, manager of education, stewardship, and measurement for the Coalition.
Kathleen Wolf, a researcher with the University of Washington’s Nature and Health Initiative, co-authored a paper that found that urban trees are essential to a health-supportive environment.
“What we have learned in recent decades is the amazing extent of the benefits of encounters and experiences of green spaces. Mental health benefits, reduced depression, reduced anxiety and stress, the ability to think more clearly and focus on tasks, and the reduction of certain clinical concerns.”
She cites the growing global movement of doctors prescribing time in nature to help treat a variety of mental and physical health ailments. Referred to as green prescriptions, the practice has not only been shown to improve various conditions but it dovetails with the concept of biophilia, which posits that humans innately need to connect with nature.
Nature can be a mood-altering medicine
What we have learned in recent decades is the amazing extent of the benefits of encounters and experiences of green spaces.
Kathleen WolF
Researcher at the University of Washington’s Nature and Health Initiative
While there’s still work to do in regards to expanding accessibility to parks and gardens for Boston’s residents, the city is planting the seeds for other communities looking to improve the equity of their green spaces. The Coalition is passionate about continuing their social advocacy work by offering an abundance of lush plant life, outdoor fitness space, and fresh produce to neighborhoods in Boston, especially those with less access to parks and gardens. They’re already planning out their next round of food forests and anticipate having 30 in Boston by 2030.
The key to Boston’s immense success in building and cultivating a wide array of accessible green spaces is collaboration. As Kathleen Robinson, steward of the Leland Cooperative Garden says, “There’s some kind of magic that happens when people work together, it’s more than the sum of its parts.”
Looking toward the future:
Further evolution of green spaces in Boston
Point32Health is a not-for-profit health and well-being organization, guiding and empowering healthier lives for all. Bringing together over 90 years of combined expertise and the collective strengths of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Tufts Health Plan, and our family of companies, we help our members and communities navigate the health care ecosystem through a broad range of health plan offerings and tools.
At Old West Church’s Food Forest, Karen Spiller and Chris Freeman — amongst other gracious volunteers — bask in the warm sunlight, joke around lightheartedly, tend to blooming flora, and simply enjoy mother nature’s priceless gifts.
Fueling the community
Kathleen Robinson stands as a proud park steward of the Leland Cooperative Garden, a thriving urban oasis nestled in the heart of the Jamaica Plain neighborhood. She poses with a sign reading “Bee Aware” to remind visitors of the garden’s vital role in nurturing pollinators and fostering biodiversity.
Building an urban oasis
At Old West Church’s Food Forest, Karen Spiller and Chris Freeman — amongst other gracious volunteers — bask in the warm sunlight, joke around lightheartedly, tend to blooming flora, and simply enjoy mother nature’s priceless gifts.
Fueling the community
What we have learned in recent decades is the amazing extent of the benefits of encounters and experiences of green spaces.
Peter James
Researcher at the University of Washington’s Nature and Health Initiative