Edible Ecosystems: A Solarpunk Approach to Agroforestry

When my husband and I bought our home earlier this year, we inherited what a lot of people would call “the perfect yard”; a dense, green carpet of grass stretching across most of our third of an acre. It was the kind of lawn you see in real estate ads: no weeds in sight, neatly trimmed, with that uniform green color that looks like a golf course.

It felt wrong from day one, and I got to work spreading seeds and putting down compost immediately. Lawns are a status symbol left over from a time when the wealthy could afford to waste land on something purely ornamental. They take constant upkeep, guzzle water, and require chemical inputs to keep them looking “perfect.” For all that effort, they feed no one and keep up the societal illusion that food isn’t a human right. Lawns give nothing to pollinators. Lawns strip the soil and destroy its health.

So we decided early on: we’re not keeping this lawn. We’re going to replace it with something alive, something that feeds us, heals the soil, supports pollinators, and works with nature instead of against it. 

That “something” is a food forest.

The Trouble With Lawns (and What’s Underneath Them)

The sin of keeping a lawn goes far beyond minimalistic boredom: they actively harm the ecosystems they exist within. The grass monoculture prevents diversity, blocks native plants from establishing, and disrupts the natural cycles that keep soil healthy. Worse, they’re often maintained with herbicides, pesticides, and synthetic fertilizers that kill beneficial insects and microbes, leach into waterways, and contribute to long-term soil degradation.

Our own property is a perfect example of what a lawn hides. Right behind the house stands a 400–500-year-old pin oak, a massive, ancient being that has stood through centuries of storms and seasons. It is strong, yet it competes with other surface-root-dwelling plants and monocrop grasses. The soil around it has been starved for decades. Heavy chemical use has stripped away nutrients and life, leaving patches of bare dirt where grass won’t even grow.

Before we moved in, another large tree fell onto the house during a storm. On paper, the storm was the cause, but looking at the ground around the stump told a different story. The soil was pale, compacted, and lifeless, with no plant growth nearby. It looked like a tree that had been weakened from the ground up.

That’s why our first step has been soil restoration. We’re using biochar to give soil microbes a stable home, compost to feed them, and cover crops to loosen the soil and pull lingering lawn chemicals out of it. It’s slow work, but every season we do it, the ground gets healthier, and healthier soil means stronger trees and better harvests down the line.

So to heal our lawn, we’re starting with:

• Biochar to improve soil structure, increase microbial life, and lock in nutrients.
  
  
• Compost to bring organic matter and beneficial organisms back into the ground.
  
  
• Cover crops like clover and daikon radish to loosen compacted soil, pull up nutrients, and outcompete weeds while filtering out lingering lawn chemicals.
  
  

It’s not quick work. Restoring soil can take years. Yet, it’s worth it, because healthy soil is the foundation for every other part of a thriving food forest.

Why a Food Forest Instead of a Lawn

A food forest is more than just “planting trees and hoping for fruit.” It’s a layered system designed to mimic how a wild forest works, except every layer also produces something edible or useful for people. Instead of sterile, single-use grass, you end up with a space where every plant serves multiple roles: food production, habitat, soil repair, water retention, beauty, and biodiversity.

In the Solarpunk vision,  where human spaces work in harmony with natural systems, lawns have no place. Instead, every patch of earth is an opportunity to grow something that benefits both people and the ecosystem.

Here’s why food forests win over lawns, every time:

• They feed you — fruits, nuts, herbs, vegetables, and perennial greens can all grow together.
  
  
• They feed pollinators — layered plantings mean there’s always something in bloom.
  
  
• They store carbon — trees and shrubs act as living climate solutions.
  
  
• They save water — deep roots and mulch keep the soil moist without constant watering.
  
  
• They’re low-maintenance long-term — once established, they require far less upkeep than a lawn.
  
  

When you put it all together, a lawn’s “value” boils down to looks. A food forest’s value is life itself.

Designing a Living, Layered System

A healthy food forest is designed in layers, each one supporting and benefiting the others:

1. Canopy Layer – Tall trees like chestnuts or hazelnuts provide shade, structure, and staple crops.
   
   
2. Understory Layer – Smaller trees such as pawpaws or serviceberries produce fruit in partial shade.
   
   
3. Shrub Layer – Elderberries, currants, blueberries feed pollinators and people.
   
   
4. Herbaceous Layer – Comfrey for mulch and nutrients, yarrow for pollinators, lemon balm for tea and medicine.
   
   
5. Groundcover Layer – Strawberries, clover, and creeping thyme suppress weeds, hold moisture, and provide edible ground cover.
   
   
6. Root Layer – Ramps, sunchokes, and other perennial root crops grow below the surface, adding another harvest layer.
   
   
7. Vine Layer – Grapes and hardy kiwi use vertical space to increase yields without taking up more ground.
   
   

On our property, the plan is to weave these layers together with hazelnuts, pawpaws, elderberries, grapes, ramps, ostrich ferns, and other perennial crops. Each plant is chosen not just for what we can harvest from it, but for how it fits into the bigger ecosystem we’re building. Since we have ancient trees to care for, every plant and its location is determined by its relationship to the oak, and so our property’s ecosystem will be based around those trees specifically in order to support them. Helping them to help ourselves and the wildlife.

Healing the Land While You Plant

You can’t just plop a food forest on damaged land and expect it to thrive. Healing the soil is part of the planting process. On our property, that means:

• Mixing biochar into planting areas to give microbes a permanent home.
  
  
• Spreading compost in thick layers to feed the soil from the top down.
  
  
• Growing cover crops in areas we aren’t ready to plant yet, so the land is always working toward repair.
  
  
• Using mulch to shade the soil, reduce evaporation, and protect it from erosion.
  
  

Each step has a purpose. Biochar creates structure and holds nutrients. Compost adds life. Cover crops act as living bandages. Mulch keeps the healing process steady. And while it can take a few seasons to see the full results, even the first signs of richer soil color, earthworms returning, and volunteer plants popping up tell you you’re on the right track.

The Long Game

The shift from lawn to food forest isn’t instant. It’s a process measured in years, not weekends. The first year, you’ll mostly see young trees, mulch, and maybe a few pioneer plants. By year three or four, you’ll start getting meaningful harvests. By year ten, you’ll have a self-sustaining ecosystem that needs minimal input from you.

For us, this is more than just a way to get fresh fruit and nuts. It’s about reversing the damage done by decades of lawn culture through repairing the soil, supporting an ancient oak, and making sure future storms don’t topple trees because their roots have nothing to hold onto.

I imagine the day I can walk out into our yard and pick pawpaws in late summer, gather ramps in the spring, and see the hazelnuts ripening in the fall. I imagine the air buzzing with pollinators and the ground carpeted in living green — not chemically supported grass, but plants that feed both us and the land.

That’s the Solarpunk future I want in my own backyard. And it starts here, shovel by shovel, seed by seed.

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— E. Silkweaver

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