[Lapg] Food Forest Takes Root in Seattle/Edible urban garden benefits community, say supporters By Jim Fogarty, Epoch Times StaffCreated: May 26, 2012

Sun May 27 08:09:12 PDT 2012

Food Forest Takes Root in Seattle
Edible urban garden benfits community, say supporters
By Jim Fogarty
Epoch Times StaffCreated: May 26, 2012Last Updated: May 26, 2012
Related articles: United States » National News
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/united-states/food-forest-takes-root-in-seattle-242907.html

(Courtesy of Friends of the Beacon Food Forest)
Seattle will soon be home to the nation's largest urban food forest. 
Planted on a seven-acre plot of land in the city's Beacon Hill 
neighborhood, the site will not only provide locally grown food to the 
area, but is viewed by those involved as a path to increased community 
cooperation and friendship.

"There is a goodwill movement to grow organic food in public spaces for 
the health of the people and other species that are beneficial to our 
food chain," said co-founder Glenn Herlihy, in an email statement. "This 
goodwill builds a stronger more resilient community, regenerates habitat 
on public lands and elevates many pressures on the environment with 
locally grown food."
A food forest, or edible garden, is a manufactured forest that's 
designed to mimic a woodland ecosystem, but with different varieties of 
edible trees, bushes, and flowers substituted.

The Beacon Food Forest will include hundreds of kinds of edible plants 
including walnut and chestnut trees, blueberry and raspberry bushes, 
apple and pear trees, pineapple, guava, persimmons, honeyberries, a 
variety of citrus, and various herbs, among others.
Fruit and nut trees will be grown on the upper level canopy, while below 
will be berry shrubs, edible perennials, and annuals.
Most of what is to be planted in Seattle's food forest will grow 
perennially, meaning that the plants will live for more than two years. 
Thus, the vegetation will, over time, become a large orchard capable of 
sustaining itself year after year.

A handwritten mission statement is displayed at a forest design party in 
Beacon Hill, Wash., September 2011. (Courtesy of Friends of the Beacon 
Food Forest)
The food forest is specifically designed so that the layers of plants 
and the insects they attract benefit each other, to increase crop 
production and provide a resilient community.

The organizers see a comparison between the plant diversity and 
relationships in the forest and human diversity and cooperation in 
planting and maintaining it.
The modern ecological system known as permaculture, where a designed 
ecosystem is managed for diversity and sustainability, is based on the 
ancient concept of food forests. Permaculture promotes the sustainable 
relationships between plants and animals that are inherently found in 
natural forests or in other natural ecosystems.

Permaculture expert and a designer of the Beacon Food Forest, Jenny 
Pell, discussed the idea of food forests in an interview with the 
independent media program Living on Earth. "Permaculture, it's an 
ethical framework with a lot of principles that give us a design 
methodology, really trying to get to sustainable, resilient human 
communities," Pell said.

Creating relationships to form an ecosystem that is able to produce high 
yields of food with less maintenance requires putting plants together 
that are mutually beneficial. Many plants are even included only for 
their ability to attract insects for promoting a system of natural pest 
management.

Glenn Herlihy, a co-founder of the Beacon Food Forest project, does the 
introductions at a forest design party in Beacon Hill, Wash., September 
2011. (Courtesy of Friends of the Beacon Food Forest)
"We're really good at picking things that are going to play well 
together," said Pell. "And when we step back, those things are going to 
grow in their own relationships--nature kind of takes over at that point."

The Friends of Beacon Food Forest community group received a $20,000 
grant from Seattle's Department of Neighborhoods to hire a small design 
team that included Pell. In December of 2011, the project received 
$100,000 from the Department of Neighborhoods to begin phase one of the 
food forest plan.
Designers hope to finish the first phase--a 1.75-acre test zone to be 
planted by the end of the year--and in the years to come they hope to 
convert the remaining acreage to fruit trees, according to Beacon Food 
Forest project committee member Glenn Herlihy on npr.org's The Salt.

Eventually being able to offer small plots for gardeners at around $10 a 
year is also in the plans, says Herlihy.
Urban Gardens

Seattle is not the first city to grow an edible forest. In Portland, 
Ore., a 2,600-square foot garden is now in its fifth season. In 2010, 
Atlanta expanded its botanical garden to include a one-acre edible garden.

Since 2007, Philadelphia has become home to 22 free to low-cost food 
forests that have sprouted up all over the city. Another Pennsylvania 
city, Pittsburgh, is preparing to grow its orchards in vacant parking 
lots. Other efforts to establish edible gardens as part of a free health 
clinic are nearing completion in Syracuse, N.Y.

In central Portugal, a nearly 20-acre forest garden system has been in 
cultivation since 2008.

For 28 generations, a single family in Vietnam has maintained a two-acre 
300-year-old food forest.
For thousands of years, forest gardens have existed in Central and South 
America. To this day many food forests can still be found scattered 
throughout the Maya and Amazon rain forests.

A 2,000-year-old food forest oasis in southern Morocco is maintained by 
over 800 people and still growing strong.
"But it's been continually managed over time for 2,000 years," says 
Pell. "So, I think what's captured people's imaginations so much about 
this project worldwide is that it's so solutions oriented. And it's so 
accessible."

Though Seattle's food forest is being grown to serve the local 
community, wherever edible gardens sprout up, the Beacon Hill developers 
hope that the motivation for growing food forests continues to spread 
far and wide.
"The reaction from the community, the country and many global regions 
has been very positive," Herlihy stated. "We encourage all people to 
join a local food growing project and empower their community with 
healthy living."
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For now, the Beacon Food Forest is the only one of its size in the 
northwest, and in the country. "I'm going to call it one of the living 
genetic banks of really valuable material in the Pacific Northwest," 
says Pell.
The ancient method of forest gardening is still in use today, and the 
Beacon Food Forest is one of its most modern demonstrations.

For more information, please visit beaconfoodforest.org
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