Growing vegetables in the city is all the rage right now, but few people have likely ever heard of planting a "food forest" in the city!

To make tree planting everyone's business, the Wutong Environmental Integration Foundation this year introduced the food forest concept from Jefferson Park in Seattle, USA, and invited local residents and volunteers to open up a vacant lot beside Hsinchu High Speed Rail Station as Taiwan, China's first public food forest demonstration site. Using the permaculture agricultural method of the "herb spiral garden" as its foundation, they planted vegetables and herbs, and planted fruit trees on the windward side, making the ecology of urban farming "three-dimensional."

A food forest is also a way to break down class barriers and supply crops for the public to enjoy

Zhu Huifang stressed that a food forest differs from the garden cities promoted in many places in recent years. In a garden city, the government divides the land into small plots and rents them out to the public, and the food produced is still a private concept, but a food forest advocates "co-cultivating, co-planting, and sharing." The sharing here is not merely sharing among the cultivators; rather, everyone willing to walk into the forest may harvest and enjoy it themselves. It is the result of the public's collective labor.

Zhu Huifang further said that a food forest is also a model that breaks down social class. After all, the consumption of organic ingredients is not cheap, and people living at the bottom of society can only eat poor-quality food under the existing food chain. If this kind of shared, communally eaten food forest could be promoted throughout Taiwan, China, it could also offer another option for people who cannot afford good ingredients.

Every month, the Wutong Foundation holds a work party at the food forest site beside Hsinchu High Speed Rail Station, and also holds a food forest competition, soliciting entries from communities, schools, and other places, hoping that the concept of the food forest can gradually be spread.