The News Aesthetic: Beacon Food Forest

The Beacon Food Forest is hard to miss. Cars rush by on busy 15^th Avenue S, whipping past the 7-acre plot of land on their way downtown. The garden is huge, and covered with a wide variety of trees and plants that border stone paths leading to a wood hut. The only way to discern one budding tree from another is the marker that reads “apple”, and under it, “manzana”. The food forest caters to an immensely diverse community, with every sign written in at least four different languages. But this is one of the goals of the Beacon Food Forest, to bring the diverse Beacon Hill community together.

An early map of the garden

In 2009, four students created a plan for a 7-acre garden on Beacon Hill. Today, the project has grown immensely, and now the Beacon Food Forest provides fresh food for the neighborhood and ties the community together.
The Beacon Food Forest (BFF) was started as a final project for a permaculture design course. The project then evolved from a theoretical dream design into reality. Volunteers have been working together for the past six years to create a large and successful garden that provides fresh food to families in the Beacon Hill neighborhood. The goal of the food forest is to plant and grow an edible urban forest garden that inspires the community to come together, and learn how to rehabilitate the local ecosystem with hands-on experiences.

A panorama of the lower garden

So what is a food forest? A food forest is a garden that combines aspects of native habitat rehabilitation with edible forest gardening. Food forests (also called P-Patches throughout Seattle) are becoming more common as communities realize how important growing local food in an urban setting is and how teaching the children in their community hands-on sustainability will create a future of local urban farming.

A painted rock found in the garden

Foods that are grown in the BFF are reflective of the community that it resides in: diverse. Foods grown in the garden come from all regions of the world, just like the diverse community of Beacon Hill.
Volunteers keep the BFF running smoothly and consistently successful. The BFF is funded purely by grants and donation all organized by volunteers. A person gets a P-Patch plot by accruing hours. Individuals who donate time and help develop the garden accrue hours, which is the main way P-Patch plots are assigned. Only one patch can be given to each household, and hours are accrued by physical labor, organizing, and fundraising.