By Matt Bise
Copyright postandcourier
Soon, the city of Goose Creek and its residents will be sowing seeds at a community food forest inside John McCants Veterans Park. Everything grown there will be natural and edible, and a common area will also sprout and nurture more community engagement.
The plan for the garden came about when Emma Hall, a planner inside city hall, heard about a grant. She believed the money could be some, in a sense, low-hanging fruit from the state government. Hall admits she’s not writing or studying grants all the time; it’s actually a small part of her job, but mining for interesting grant money is her work hobby.
“I am interested in a lot of environmental efforts,” Hall said. “We were in a meeting with the Shi Institute, and they had mentioned the fact that the South Carolina Forestry Commission was running a grant program for a food forest, and I thought that would be a great opportunity for the city to have that type of resource and amenity.”
Hall decided to take a swing at the grant and applied. Along with her other responsibilities at work, she had to carve out pieces of time and had to request completion in roughly three weeks. Then, the wait. Hall said the grant was submitted in November 2024, and in February, she got word that the city received the grant.
Now the real work had to begin. Along with some coordination from parks and recreation and public works, the 19,000-square-foot food forest will soon be a reality. The grant was $72,000 with a 20% match from the city. Goose Creek pays around $13,000 for the coming amenities, but when Hall’s vision comes into focus, it will be a good return on the investment.
“Most of it will be all edible plants with companion plants,” she said. “Those are the plants that will help the edibles do better in the ground. It’s basically a sustainable multi-layered canopy system. It will be like a natural forest consisting of seven different layers.”
It seems the city has the specs on how to foster the perfect ecosystem to make the forest thrive. Now it’s about the buy-in from the community, and that has already exceeded expectations.
