Urban Food Forests

Hi all! If you haven't yet seen the news flurry on the upcoming Beacon Food Forest in Seattle I encourage you click the link and check it out!

It's personally exciting for me because I was part of the Permaculture course teaching team that helped Glenn's Design Team hatch this amazing project.

So what's been fun for me in the last couple weeks is that people will talk about the food forest, or email me a link, or even stammer about it at a community meeting, and they say "Have you heard?" and I get to say "Yes! and I was one of their instructors!!"

Another of the Design Teams at that class designed the beautiful and educational edible landscaping at Bastyr University's student village. A Design Team from a permaculture course in Tacoma has been working with MetroParks Tacoma to implement a food forest at Swan Creek Park. And the most recent Tacoma permaculture course has projects going at 2 local churches, one private house, and augmenting Hilltop Urban Gardens.Woohoo!

But wait? What is all this you ask? How about some definitions:

A food forest is a garden structured like a forest (with canopy layer, shrub layer,  herb layer) etc, except the species chosen are all super useful. Edibles, medicinals, plants that take care of other plants, plants to attract pollinators, etc. It's like going for a walk in the forest but being able to harvest seeds or berries or veggies all along the way.

A permaculture course is a robust curriculum about how to live on the earth sustainably. What, how can that be taught?? you say. Well, it's like a crash course in how to integrate food-growing systems, water systems, soil building strategies, natural building, sustainable economics, etc. The course that the Beacon Food Foresters took was taught in once-a-month weekends for half a year, somewhat similarly to how we do it in Tacoma. Sometimes though people camp out with each other for a few weeks and get the whole educational curriculum all in one dose.

A design team project is the culminating project of students taking a permaculture course. For 14 days or so they are learning plants, and taking notes about water, and improving soils, and on and on. And then the teaching team asks them "all right folks, what do You want to learn how to design?". At which point people form into teams to work on how to integrate what they've learned into a design for the community that can actually work.

The beauty of the beacon food forest is that after the permaculture class ended, they just didn't stop! They organized community meetings, sent out invitations in many languages, and kept through the slow process of working with city bureacracy. And it's been so worth it! I can't wait to see how they'll address some challenges (who'll manage the system? how much food can people take? when can they take it?).

This is a creative hard-working team so stay tuned for further developments.

Oh, and if you're interested in learning more about food forests or the systems and communities that are putting them together, I have a fun place for you to look for more info. Jenny Pell (lead instructor at above-mentioned permaculture course and designer of the beacon food forest) and myself and others are planning a 2-week camp-out permaculture course for this June on Camano Island. Click on the embedded link for more info.