The Dirt on Seattle’s Food Forest

[Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story came out last fall in Seattle’s Real Change News, the country’s largest street newspaper, and subsequently was covered in The Seattle Times and Crosscut, a Northwest-based environmental blog. According to columnist Paul Haeder, this Food Forest project is receiving more and more attention, and is also being touted as the largest of its kind in the U.S. using public funds. The following is an extended version of the original story especially for Down to EarthNW audiences.) We might not get to experience the fun and philosophy of mythical hobbits wandering through Seattle’s Beacon Hill Food Forest, but it isn’t beyond the realm of possibilities to see exotic produce from Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Somalia and Central and South America growing just 2.5 miles from downtown Seattle. Even more rare for the Beacon Hill Food Forest is that it involves public land – Jefferson Park – and strong support from a heavy hitter: Seattle Public Utilities. The 7-acre Food Forest has become much more than a community garden – what makes it different is a philosophy of permanence through permaculture, a food growing system tied to strong ecological elements, such as creating food for pollinators like bees and hummingbirds is as important as growing native foods and herbs for people. “This is new for SPU’s properties,” said Christina Olson, life-long resident of Beacon Hill and voice in the community group known as Friends of Beacon Food Forest. Olson, whose grandparents lived on Beacon Hill, is effusive about the fact that the P-Patch Program, Department of Neighborhoods and City Council President Richard Conlin have put so much effort behind this project and the urban gardening movement. The Beacon Food Forest is not about creating a park-like setting, nor is the design looking for traditional community garden overlays. It’s about bringing back trees and improving soil and enhancing water. “We’ll keep some areas tidy,” said Glenn Herlihy, a 48-year-old garden designer, sculptor and 16-year resident of Beacon Hill, who was one of three students in a 2009 permaculture class that have a stake in the Food Forest plan. That’s the Inner Zone, where gardening needs are met. Then comes Zone 2, which is wilder, with berries and bee hives. Zone 3 is a web of fruit- and nut-bearing trees, the orchard. Zones 4 and 5 are wild areas, where native plant growing, harvesting and wild crafting will take place. The goal is centered around people with few economic means learning gardening, food storage, seed saving and the holistic web of growing their own communities through food. The idea for transforming this park into a community-inspired, community-driven collective gardening arena came from a design class taken two years ago by Herlihy. “We picked Jefferson Park and came up with a design to pass the class,” he said. He also was involved in the Jefferson Park Alliance and Beacon Mountain Playground project. With the umbrella oversight of the Seattle P-Patch Program and Department of Neighborhoods, the Beacon Food Forest landed a $22,000 city grant to hire a consultant and pay for outreach and conceptual designs. The June 7, 2011, meeting was attended by 60 people. The second meeting a month later garnered 70 people. Olson said mailings were sent to 7,000 households in five languages prior to the first meeting, including Somali, Mandarin, Vietnamese and Spanish. The key to the community gardening in a Food Forest, based on permaculture design elements, is neighborhood “buy-in,” with individuals and groups actively engaged in design oversight, management and participation. Along with support and interest from individuals residents, Olson and Herlihy said Mercer Middle School and Cleveland High School are interested in outdoor, experiential learning projects and community service learning classes at the Food Forest site, and Olson mentioned the Veterans Administration has been contacted to see if VA Hospital outpatient members with PTSD and other challenges might connect with gardening as possible rehabilitation. Jefferson Park was the City of Seattle’s reservoir and cemetery in 1898. It also housed the stockade, park nursery, and greenhouse. It was named in 1908 to honor Thomas Jefferson. The Olmsted Brothers designed the 18-hole golf course which has been open since 1915. While the permaculture concept is thousands of years old, it takes education and practice to get the average modern gardener to approve. “This project is still about food and nutrition,” Herlihy said. “There are a lot of hungry and out of work folk on Beacon Hill. Think of this as low cost organic gardening.” While the aesthetic of wild gardening will require education, signage, and workshops — part of the grant’s requirement — the bottom line is that organizations and community groups, like Seattle’s El Centro de la Raza, will take the lead in getting produce to food banks. With the City of Seattle already working on a Food Policy Action Plan and recently passing a Local Food Action Initiative, Beacon Food Forest was on the right track with a September 2011 meeting to show the community the Harrison Design Team’s plan for the food forest, after robust and impassioned input at previous meetings. With 2010 proclaimed as Seattle’s Year of Urban Agriculture, Herlihy and Olson were confident the next phase involving over $100,000 in grants would carry forth. That money has been secured. They both see in two years a viable forest thriving on Beacon Hill. The dream of that enchanted forest entails $300,000 to $500,000, full city support in poor economic times, and the will and food growing knowledge, skills and labor from this neighborhood, one Olson characterizes as always changing demographically but one that is seated in hard work. “What determines the size of the food forest is how many people will commit,” Glenn Herlihy said. For Olson, who worked for the Washington Department of Transportation, that won’t be difficult: “There are no slackers living on Beacon Hill.” She has seen more and more immigrant neighbors move here, and she’s a proponent of diversity, both in the areas of race, culture, and traditions and biodiversity. If Hobbits like mushrooms, then expect a whole variety of them in those wild zones when Beacon Hill Forest takes off. The volunteers and paid staff with Seattle P-Patch (BFF is a Seattle P-Patch) are now in negotiations with government agencies to find the correct connection point to city water. The soil’s there, but water is key. The labor is also there: The BFF has many supporters in Seattle, especially Beacon Hill, and up and coming old neighborhood going new. Then, “final drawings for construction will be delivered to the Conservation Corps who will be doing the construction beginning, we hope, later this month (October),” Herlihy said.