Multiple Levels of a South Texas Food Forest

In this video, we take you on a tour of the food forest at Keepers of the Garden, an urban agroforestry farm in Corpus Christi, Texas. This urban agroforestry farm is located in the Southern Subhumid Gulf Coastal Prairies ecoregion, in hardiness zone 9b, and it serves not only as a production farm, but also as an educational center for schools, a refuge for local wildlife, and a community hub.

The food forest at Keepers of the Garden consists of multiple vertical layers of vegetation, including an overstory of tall trees, an understory of shorter trees, a shrub layer, an herbaceous layer, a groundcover layer, and a vine layer.

All of the plants are either edible or have medicinal properties, but they also provide other benefits to the food forest, such as providing shade to understory plants to help them stay cool, providing habitat to local birds, covering the soil, fixing nitrogen, and more. Check out the plants that Keepers of the Garden has chosen for each layer of their South Texas food forest, and get inspired to plant your own!

This video is produced by the National Center for Appropriate Technology through the ATTRA Sustainable Agriculture program, under a cooperative agreement with USDA Rural Development. ATTRA.NCAT.ORG.