United States' first food forest to be built in Seattle

[merithyn]

I would love to do this here in Champaign/Urbana. I think it's a brilliant plan.

Article

Seattle's vision of an urban food oasis is going forward. A seven-acre plot of land in the city's Beacon Hill neighborhood will be planted with hundreds of different kinds of edibles: walnut and chestnut trees; blueberry and raspberry bushes; fruit trees, including apples and pears; exotics like pineapple, yuzu citrus, guava, persimmons, honeyberries, and lingonberries; herbs; and more. All will be available for public plucking to anyone who wanders into the city's first food forest.

"This is totally innovative, and has never been done before in a public park," Margarett Harrison, lead landscape architect for the Beacon Food Forest project, tells TakePart. Harrison is working on construction and permit drawings now and expects to break ground this summer.

The concept of a food forest certainly pushes the envelope on urban agriculture and is grounded in the concept of permaculture, which means it will be perennial and self-sustaining, like a forest is in the wild. Not only is this forest Seattle's first large-scale permaculture project, but it's also believed to be the first of its kind in the nation.

"The concept means we consider the soils, companion plants, insects, bugs—everything will be mutually beneficial to each other," says Harrison.

That the plan came together at all is remarkable on its own. What started as a group project for a permaculture design course ended up as a textbook example of community outreach gone right.

"Friends of the Food Forest undertook heroic outreach efforts to secure neighborhood support. The team mailed over 6,000 postcards in five different languages, tabled at events and fairs, and posted fliers," writes Robert Mellinger for Crosscut.

Neighborhood input was so valued by the organizers, they even used translators to help Chinese residents have a voice in the planning.

So just who gets to harvest all that low-hanging fruit when the time comes?

"Anyone and everyone," says Harrison. "There was major discussion about it. People worried, 'What if someone comes and takes all the blueberries?' That could very well happen, but maybe someone needed those blueberries. We look at it this way—if we have none at the end of blueberry season, then it means we're successful."

[Admiral Yi]

A Seattle buddy of mine told me you can tell it's spring when all the long hairs crawl on their hand and knees in the public parks looking for magic mushrooms.

[Sheilbh]

A Seattle buddy of mine told me you can tell it's spring when all the long hairs crawl on their hand and knees in the public parks looking for magic mushrooms.

Sometimes I swear you're posting from the late 80s

[derspiess]

I read recently where a lot of urban gardens produce food not safe to eat due to industrial waste still in the soil decades after nearby factories were torn down.

But if this thing works and they can justify the expense, great.

[Malthus]

I have my doubts as to its actual implementation. Caring for a wide variety of species in an urban environment takes a lot of ongoing work, which is very expensive in terms of labour, and I imagine an urban food source is going to be vulnerable to vandalism.

However, very interesting concept.

[crazy canuck]

I have my doubts as to its actual implementation. Caring for a wide variety of species in an urban environment takes a lot of ongoing work, which is very expensive in terms of labour, and I imagine an urban food source is going to be vulnerable to vandalism.

However, very interesting concept.

Urban gardening on vacant lots or any spare space has a pretty long tradition here in Vancouver.  The evolution here is the size of the space.  I assume they will develop it organically....

[Viking]

Now we just need to wipe out all third world people and replace their countries with low yield food forests and we can feed all the (few remaining) members of humanity.

[11B4V]

Well that will turn out be the new home to Nickelsville.

[merithyn]

I have my doubts as to its actual implementation. Caring for a wide variety of species in an urban environment takes a lot of ongoing work, which is very expensive in terms of labour, and I imagine an urban food source is going to be vulnerable to vandalism.

However, very interesting concept.

It's meant to be a permaculture forest, which means that it should require very little ongoing work compared to a typical field of veggies and fruits.

[DGuller]

"Anyone and everyone," says Harrison. "There was major discussion about it. People worried, 'What if someone comes and takes all the blueberries?' That could very well happen, but maybe someone needed those blueberries. We look at it this way—if we have none at the end of blueberry season, then it means we're successful."

[lustindarkness]

Won't work, the hippies don't understand that my fellow spics will go and pick all the fruit and sell it. All of it.

[garbon]

I have my doubts as to its actual implementation. Caring for a wide variety of species in an urban environment takes a lot of ongoing work, which is very expensive in terms of labour, and I imagine an urban food source is going to be vulnerable to vandalism.

However, very interesting concept.

Urban gardening on vacant lots or any spare space has a pretty long tradition here in Vancouver.  The evolution here is the size of the space.  I assume they will develop it organically....

I don't know if these same as what you're talking about - but here in many cities there are urban community gardens - but I don't think the public can generally just come and take whatever produce there is growing. So that's what strikes me about the Seattle proposal which is very different from one city I know of down in the Desert that gets angry if people take the orange off their trees (even though they just let those oranges fall and rot).

[DGuller]

Won't work, the hippies don't understand that my fellow spics will go and pick all the fruit and sell it. All of it.

Yeah, this has tragedy of the commons written all over it.

[merithyn]

I don't know if these same as what you're talking about - but here in many cities there are urban community gardens - but I don't think the public can generally just come and take whatever produce there is growing. So that's what strikes me about the Seattle proposal which is very different from one city I know of down in the Desert that gets angry if people take the orange off their trees (even though they just let those oranges fall and rot).

I think that's the biggest difference. That and the fact that it's a permaculture, so it won't require the continual upkeep that most urban community gardens require. And there's no fee, again, something that happens with the urban community gardens that I'm aware of.

[crazy canuck]

I don't know if these same as what you're talking about - but here in many cities there are urban community gardens - but I don't think the public can generally just come and take whatever produce there is growing. So that's what strikes me about the Seattle proposal which is very different from one city I know of down in the Desert that gets angry if people take the orange off their trees (even though they just let those oranges fall and rot).

I think that's the biggest difference. That and the fact that it's a permaculture, so it won't require the continual upkeep that most urban community gardens require. And there's no fee, again, something that happens with the urban community gardens that I'm aware of.

I am not sure what urban community gardens are where you live but here there is no fee and people pretty much do as they please.  The only difference between what they are going to do in Seattle and what already occurs here is the size of the space that is going to be provided.

It is, as Malthus said, an interesting concept.  I hope it works.

For it to work (and to avoid the tragedy of the commons) people will create and enforce their own norms about things like harvesting.  It works on a small scale here.  We will see how it works on a bigger scale.