‘Open Yard’ Event Set to Debut at FH Blueberry Festival
The 2022 Forest Heights Blueberry Festival will feature a new event to inspire people with ideas for regenerating their suburban yards with food crops, wildlife habitat, and healthy soil practices.
Beginning at 2 p.m. on Saturday, June 4, Forest Heights resident, Kerem Kilic, will give short tours of his early-stage permaculture project at 515 Forest Heights Drive (on the corner of Stoneland). Here’s how Kerem describes the project, which he’s dubbed Treeunion Forest Gardens:
We are primarily interested in regenerating our suburban landscape and lawn so that it is an edible and ecological landscape that helps create resiliency, food security and sovereignty while limiting our inputs from industrial systems. We intend to create habitat for native and migrating species and hope to demonstrate techniques for watershed stewardship through rainwater harvesting and earthworks.
Through thoughtful observation and design we have just started the process of transforming our lawn into a food forest that has a diversity of nut, fruit and soil-building trees, shrubs, and herbs. We hope to demonstrate and experiment with the cultivation of uncommon perennial and annual species that are bioregionally appropriate and ecological mutualistic.
Kerem, who is a certified permaculture designer, has experience working on numerous organic farms and the UGA International Botanical Garden. He also holds an undergraduate degree in genetics from UGA with an emphasis on biochemistry and ecological diversity. He operates Treeunion Forest Gardens as a small urban farm, currently focused on the production of gourmet mushrooms and experimenting with other woodland crops that can do well under the mature trees of Forest Heights.
His long-term goal is for Treeunion Forest Gardens to function as a neighborhood nursery, offering useful and unique plants, providing consultation services, and inspiring others to develop enjoyable and deep relationships with our unique corner of the world through forest gardening.
Kids Activities & Attendance Details
Tour slots are limited, so sign-up is strongly encouraged. A $5 donation to the festival is suggested and comes with one ticket for door-prizes to be given away during The Blueberry Jam concert that evening. Donations can be made via Venmo (@FHBlueberry) or with cash on the day of (please bring correct change).
Tour times will be 2 p.m., 2:45 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. Please show up 10 minutes in advance.
Kids activities will take place alongside the tours, sponsored by Danielle Gillmer, Forest Heights blueberry host and a real estate agent at Keller Williams Greater Athens. The activities will include a make-and-paint your own butterfly feeder, plenty of sidewalk chalk, bubbles, and more! (Young children need to be supervised by an adult.)
We hope this event will be the first of several “Open Yard” events spread throughout the year to share information and ideas among Forest Heights residents.
Reserve tour slots by signing up here.
And don’t forget to order your Festival merchandise (our primary fundraiser) before midnight on Tuesday, May 24!.
