{"id":4189,"date":"2012-03-10T13:04:13","date_gmt":"2012-03-10T11:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/?p=4189"},"modified":"2012-03-10T13:04:13","modified_gmt":"2012-03-10T11:04:13","slug":"seattle-to-build-nations-first-food-forest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/journalism\/seattle-to-build-nations-first-food-forest\/","title":{"rendered":"Seattle to Build Nation\u2019s First Food Forest"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nForget meadows. The city\u2019s new park will be filled with edible plants, and everything from pears to herbs will be free for the taking.<\/em>
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\nSeattle\u2019s vision of an urban food oasis is going forward. A seven-acre plot of land in the city\u2019s 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\u2019s first food forest.
\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is totally innovative, and has never been done before in a public park,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s first large-scale permaculture project, but it\u2019s also believed to be the first of its kind in the nation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe concept means we consider the soils, companion plants, insects, bugs\u2014everything will be mutually beneficial to each other,\u201d says Harrison.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cFriends 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,\u201d writes Robert Mellinger for Crosscut.<\/p>\n

Neighborhood input was so valued by the organizers, they even used translators to help Chinese residents have a voice in the planning.<\/p>\n

So just who gets to harvest all that low-hanging fruit when the time comes?<\/p>\n

\u201cAnyone and everyone,\u201d says Harrison. \u201cThere was major discussion about it. People worried, \u2018What if someone comes and takes all the blueberries?\u2019 That could very well happen, but maybe someone needed those blueberries. We look at it this way\u2014if we have none at the end of blueberry season, then it means we\u2019re successful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nSource:: takepart.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forget meadows. The city\u2019s new park will be filled with edible plants, and everything from pears to herbs will be free for the taking. Seattle\u2019s vision of an urban food oasis is going forward. A seven-acre plot of land in the city\u2019s 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…<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,15,33,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-journalism","category-nature","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ph7OQR-15z","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}