In an idea that has universal appeal the United States city of Seattle is to set up the country’s first food forest, filled with edible plants, and everything from pears to herbs will be free for the taking.
A three hectare plot of land in the city’s Beacon Hill neighbourhood will be planted with hundreds of different kinds of edibles.
The forest will invlude: 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.
Ms Harrison is working on construction and permit drawings and expects the project to break ground in the coming months.
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,” said Ms Harrison.
US media reports suggest 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 neighbourhood support.
The team mailed over 6000 postcards in five different languages, tabled at events and fairs, and posted fliers,” said local organiser Robert Mellinger.
Neighbourhood input was so valued by the organisers, 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, although there were major discussions about it” said Ms Harrison.
“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,” she added.
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