Swale looks more like your typical vegetable garden than anything else, with a kind of controlled chaos. Circular beds nearly overflowing with vegetation are dotted around the entrance, some with vines that snake up trellises and others with blankets of clover and larger leafy bushes. The smaller beds give way to larger expanses of green towards the back with gravel paths meandering in between and a set of picnic tables in the center. It could be a cozy, charming garden anywhere in the country. It’s only the gentle sway of the tide moving out and the briny smell of the air that gives it away. Because Swale is on a barge in the middle of the East River.

Artist Mary Mattingly and her team have created a floating food forest that’s part of New York City’s Art in the Parks program. The project was aimed at creating a new way of looking at food and sustainability practices in big cities by revitalizing old garden spaces into places where communities can grow and share food. Food Forests are carefully designed to allow them to be self-sustaining and therefore be able to produce food year after year with little outside assistance.