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Up With Trees Planting a Food Forest Along Tisdale Parkway

Up With Trees

Up With Trees is trying a food forest concept along the L.L. Tisdale Parkway.

The group will be out tomorrow planting hundreds of trees, including pecan, fig and apple trees.

"Some of the understory will be blackberries and raspberries," said Up With Trees Executive Director Steve Grantham. "It really highlights all of the multiple benefits that trees provide to people living in an urban community."

Besides providing fruits and nuts, the trees will create a sound barrier for the neighborhood adjacent to the parkway and decrease runoff.

Up With Trees will have a lot of help taking care of the food forest.

"The Brady Heights Neighborhood association for years has had a community garden and have very much invested volunteers in maintaining that," Grantham said. "They're going to take that passion and help maintain the trees as well."

The neighborhood association will help get teens involved.

One goal for the forest is helping improve access to healthy foods.

"There was a nutritionist that came forward and said, you know, there are some essential oils and proteins that aren't necessarily in the diets of children in the area and that nuts could help provide that," Grantham said.

More volunteers are welcome. They’ll start at 9 a.m. on the east side of Tisdale Parkway, south of Marshall Street. Volunteers must not park on the highway.

Matt Trotter joined KWGS as a reporter in 2013. Before coming to Public Radio Tulsa, he was the investigative producer at KJRH. His freelance work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and on MSNBC and CNN.