Builder
Orion Kriegman is helping Boston neighborhoods turn vacant land into food forests.
The work began in Jamaica Plain.
Orion was organizing around local economic resilience when neighbors started imagining a different future for an overgrown vacant lot on Boylston Street. That effort became Egleston Community Orchard, the first food forest eventually brought into the Boston Food Forest Coalition’s community land trust.
The idea kept growing.
Food forests combine elements of a park, orchard, garden, and natural ecosystem. Fruit and nut trees grow above berries, shrubs, herbs, vines, and other perennial plants. Paths and gathering spaces make them places people can use throughout the day.
The food is free to harvest.
The parks are also designed and cared for by people who live nearby.
Orion helped build the Boston Food Forest Coalition around that relationship between land and neighborhood. Local residents identify sites, help design them, form stewardship teams, plant and maintain the landscapes, and guide how the spaces evolve.
The Coalition adds another layer through its community land trust. Properties brought into the trust are held permanently for community use, with community members represented in the governance of the land.
As of January 2026, the network includes 13 food forest parks across Boston, with a goal of reaching 30 by 2030.
That growth has turned scattered pieces of underused land into something larger: a network of small public spaces that grow food, add tree canopy, support wildlife, create places to gather, and give neighborhoods a lasting stake in the ground beneath them.
Orion has spent years asking how much life can fit into a vacant lot.
Boston keeps giving him more places to find out.
The garden is only part of the infrastructure.
Boston Food Forest Coalition also gives neighborhoods a way to hold onto the land beneath it.
Through its community land trust, food forest properties can be removed from the cycle of speculation and protected for public use over the long term. Neighborhood stewards help shape the spaces, care for them, harvest from them, and participate in the community that owns them.
That changes what a vacant lot can become.
Trees create shade. Roots hold soil. Flowers support pollinators. Fruit and herbs become food. Paths and seating create somewhere to meet a neighbor.
And the land stays available for the next generation to do the same.
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