AUSTIN, Texas — Taking a stroll on Lady Bird Lake, you are surrounded by nature and, at times, you can forget that a few steps away are huge high rises and a concrete jungle of streets.
Just like the trail, hidden natural gems can be found all across Austin – you just need to know where to look.
A perfect example of this is the Festival Beach Food Forest, nestled east of Interstate 35 and a few steps off the beaten path of Lady Bird Lake. It sits on just two-thirds of an acre of land, but it is more than just a community garden.
“It’s permanent biomass. It's 90% perennial plants, and so what were doing here is creating more of an ecosystem. We're creating microclimates, we have all these different levels in the food forest, just like you would have in a natural forest,” said Karen Luzius, a long-time volunteer who is now the official land steward of the property.
For the past eight years, Luzius and other volunteers have developed the mini forest to work not only as a green space but a growing space. Think about what it would look like if nature had a supermarket.
Volunteer Jacob Juarez lead KVUE's Grace Thornton through the winding paths.
“We have things like sage and mint that can get picked. We have corn, squashes, I believe there's some asparagus. And as things harvest, we will harvest and donate them out,” Juarez said.
The forest is almost completely volunteer-led, adding on three paid positions as of this year. But the growth doesn't stop there. The volunteers just got approved to spread the food forest into the rest of their preexisting lot, tripling their grounds to almost three acres.
One of the group leaders, Aly Tharp, explained that the second phase of the forest will look slightly different. She said it won't be as densely planted, but it will still grow food and medicinal plants. The volunteers also plan to plant a wildflower meadow and add more educational spaces.
But as the food forest is set to expand, Austin keeps booming around it.
"The current feeder roads are going to change. It will definitely affect our parking, like the access people have to our park, especially on days where we have lots of volunteers out here," explained Angelina Alanis, the forest's Communications & Partnership coordinator.
The expansion of I-35 is expected to get underway in the next year. While the forest won't be displaced, there are plenty of changes to anticipate.
"A big concern we have is particles in the air. So, things coming from construction and landing on our plants, on our volunteers, affecting people's breathing and the health of our microclimate," Alanis said.
There are also talks of noise walls that, depending on their placement, could block breezes from the river.
But the caretakers of the food forest are standing strong in their fight to keep green spaces flourishing for a future Austin.
“There's always been this perception that the resources in Austin stay on the west side of 35. And so, I think it's really interesting that this is potentially, it could be a point of change,” Alanis said. “There's opportunity here to kind of right some of those wrongs.”
The volunteers believe this place is a part of bigger change: bringing green space, food access, community and beauty back to the city.