Soon, local residents will be able to gather their own food straight from a forest. On Saturday, the City of Davenport will break ground on the first "food forest" in the Quad Cities.
Spokesman, Chris Rice, says the Black Hawk Garden Community Food Forest will have fruit and nut trees, plus perennial and annual plants, including blueberries and raspberries.
"We're going to be planting some of the trees that are going to be the canopy trees first, and then, over the course of several years, we're going to be adding in the lower layers that need the shade of the canopy tree to be able to grow in," Rice says.
The "food forest" will be located in southwest Davenport in the 3100 block of Pansy Avenue.
"The houses were all torn down because of flash flooding and the land's been sitting there and now we have a group of volunteers that are willing to put forth the work to build a food forest there."
Volunteers will begin planting the forest's first 80 trees after the groundbreaking ceremony. Rice says once the forest forest will take about 5 years to fully develop. Then, the public can come and pick their own fruits and nuts for free.
The Black Hawk Garden Community Food Forest will break ground at 10 a.m. on Saturday.