The city of Hyattsville is working with University of Maryland researchers to improve the Emerson Street Food Forest.

Located at 4515 Emerson St., the food forest is a planned garden with a variety of herbs, shrubs, berries, fruit and nut trees available for the public to harvest and eat year-round, including pawpaws, which are currently in season.

The pesticide-free garden is already mostly self-sufficient, needling little irrigation and no fertilizer and just a little weeding and upkeep from volunteers every now and then.

But researchers with the Global FEWture Alliance plan to use money from a grant program to capture rainwater from a large metal roof on a nearby building and add compost bins to dispose of weeds and food waste.

They’ll also add some new features to make the park more usable as an outdoor classroom for University of Maryland students studying agriculture and the environment.

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