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The Beacon Food Forest started in 2009 as a final design project for a permaculture design course. The site chosen is a 7-acre area which is currently all grass, on the western terraced slopes of what was thought to be Jefferson Park but in reality is owned by Seattle Public Utilities. The design was then presented to the community of Beacon Hill, Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation, and Seattle Public Utilities to see if there was support for such a project. Support was granted in the form of an SAS grant from Seattle Department of Neighborhoods for $22,000 in December of 2010 to hire a design consultant and create a schematic design for a food forest. In March of 2011 the Friends of Beacon Food Forest hired The Harrison Design Team consisting of Margarett Harrison, Jenny Pell, Dave Boehnlein and Kris Pendleton. After a series of community meetings the team presented a final schematic (viewable here). In December 2011 the project received a $100,000 award from the Parks & Green Spaces Levy for design and construction for a 1-acre portion of the food forest.

A Food Forest is a gardening technique or land management system that mimics a woodland ecosystem but substitutes in edible trees, shrubs, perennials and annuals. Fruit and nut trees are the upper level, while below are berry shrubs, edible perennials and annuals. Companions or beneficial plants are included to attract insects for natural pest management while some plants are soil amenders providing nitrogen and mulch. Together they create relationships to form a forest garden ecosystem able to produce high yields of food with less maintenance. Learn more about food forests at the Edible Food Gardens website.

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Over the past few days, permaculture practitioners and urban food policy followers not just in the Emerald City but around the globe have been positively abuzz with news that a hilly and undeveloped 7-acre parcel of land owned by Seattle Public Utilities will be transformed into a lush, forager-friendly wonderland called the Beacon Food Forest.

To be clear, the future site of the food forest — thought to be the largest of its kind in the U.S. — isn’t located in some sylvan pocket on the outskirts of town, in a woodsy bedroom community, or in, gulp, neighboring Snohomish County. The Beacon Food Forest will be located less than 3 miles southeast of Seattle’s downtown core in the ethnically and economically diverse Beacon Hill neighborhood (former home of Amazon.com, by the way) adjacent to a large park. It’s very much an urban endeavor that can best be described as a P-Patch (Seattle vernacular for community plot — there are more than 75 throughout the city all overseen by a nonprofit called P-Patch Trust) on steroids.

So what exactly is a food forest, you ask? Here’s how the Beacon Food Forest describes the basics of this permaculture concept:

A Food Forest is a gardening technique or land management system that mimics a woodland ecosystem but substitutes in edible trees, shrubs, perennials and annuals. Fruit and nut trees are the upper level, while below are berry shrubs, edible perennials and annuals. Companions or beneficial plants are included to attract insects for natural pest management while some plants are soil amenders providing nitrogen and mulch. Together they create relationships to form a forest garden ecosystem able to produce high yields of food with less maintenance.

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Originally posted by NewOldBrownCoat:
Without being a Raptard( TMReg.), the idea had been around since 2009, they've spent over $100,000 on it, it was a 7 acre site , it's still a 7 acre site all covered in grass, and they've got a PLAN for 1 acre of it, which somebody finally VOTED to START ON.

It's been a long time since so many spent so much for so little.

Dudes, ya can't eat the MENU. Buy some seeds, break some ground, plant something already!

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Mike
Do I wish more were being done? Absolutely. But I am also glad that ANYTHING is being done. Sure, one acre can't make an ecosystem, but zero acres definitely makes a zero ecosystem. I'll take every acre as a small step forward.

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Originally posted by Niki2:

Amen Mike. Every step forward is a step FORWARD...and the first steps are always the hardest. So we should stop trying to step forward???

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Originally posted by Niki2:
Amen Mike. Every step forward is a step FORWARD...and the first steps are always the hardest. So we should stop trying to step forward???

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