Norris Lake Community Garden and Food Forest was a community design process from inception to implementation. We led stakeholders wanting a community garden to identify a site and define features to realize this central food-producing landscape on a lakeside peninsula. This project is the most recent in our long-time collaborative relationship with Atlanta Food and Farm (AF2).  AF2 initiated the community process to provide design input and establish community structure that would support the garden over the long term.

Conceptual Design for Norris Lake Community Garden features a Food Forest, community garden plots and wildlife habitat on a lakeside peninsula.  The lakeside location offers interesting ecological solutions for wildlife, such as live staking with trees and shrubs such as Itea, buttonbush, Silky dogwood and establishment of other wet edge species like swamp milkweed and yellowroot.  A pollinator meadow, forest mushroom cultivation, native medicinal herbs, trees and shrubs beneficial for people, native birds and pollinators were also included in the design. Native and non-native fruits and nuts like American persimmon, mulberry, pawpaw, chestnut, pomegranate and Chickasaw plum comprised the overstay of the food forest with companion understory, such as walking onion, mint, comfrey and nasturtium.