Food Forest

The Food Forest, a botanical garden which is ran by fgcu students contains tropical and subtropical species which provides the community at fgcu with education opportunities and the ability to pick up edible species to take home.

The Food Forest at Florida Gulf Coast University can be located right next to the Welcome center which is the first right after you pass the main entrance booth. Once you make that first right you will pass the Welcome center and you will arrive at the food forest located on your left.

Hours of operation: The hours of operation for the food forest are sunrise to sunset, everyday.

Contact Information: To contact the food forest you can visit their facebook page, email them at foodforest@fgcu.edu, or call them at (239)-590-7015.

Connection to sustainability: The food forest has a compost pile. This promotes sustainability because it gives students and staff an opportunity to use their waste to good use. Instead of discarding of their waste in the trash, they can put it in the compost pile to help contribute to fertilizing the plants growing in the food forest.

• Creator/Founder of Food Forest: FGCU student government (Executive Branch) in Spring of 2011 initiated the Food Forest
• Why was it created?: To teach students about sustainability. Is used as an educational tool in the community by teaching people about the variety of species that are being grown there. The foods being grown there come from many different parts of the world and and prove to people that they can be grown locally, here in Southwest Florida.
• Why is it important?: The Food Forest brings more biodiversity to our campus and its ecosystem. It also provides opportunities for students to learn about the ecosystem we have, the species growing in the forest, and sustainability overall. The edible species in the forest are a great source of produce for our campus, students, and our food pantry. Also, the Food Forest provides service learning hours to FGCU students in order to meet their 80 hour requirement for graduation.
• A Permaculture garden has its own ethics and principles. It wants the food forest to benefit people and the land. The food forest produces no waste (compost), if not, it is mulched. They use natural solutions especially for big control. Let systems mimic natural ecosystems, not a lot of man made control within the forest. How to best utilize the nature thats around (example is what direction the sun is coming in).
• It has been rough and lost biodiversity since the last hurricane that hit, since then they have cleaned up and replanted species affected.

French, Aaron. "A Taste of the Wild." Natural History, Mar. 2009, p. 48. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A194903308/GPS?u=gale15690&sid=GPS&xid=663e5284. Accessed 5 Nov. 2018.

Jablonsky, Michal, et al. "Extraction of value-added components from food industry based and agro-forest biowastes by deep eutectic solvents." Journal of Biotechnology, vol. 282, 2018, p. 46. Academic OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A549817033/GPS?u=gale15690&sid=GPS&xid=9eb8f606. Accessed 5 Nov. 2018.

Office of Undergraduate Studies, www2.fgcu.edu/undergraduatestudies/foodforest.html.