Beacon Food Forest
- Location
- Seattle, WA
Organization Details
About
Our vision is a world where every community participates in creating local food ecosystems.
The Beacon Food Forest (BFF) is a volunteer-run community garden and edible landscape in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Seattle that was started 2009.
BFF's mission is to design and grow a self-sustaining urban forest garden that inspires our community to gather together, grow our own food and rehabilitate our local ecosystem.
BFF is located on 7 acres of land owned by the City of Seattle. SinceSeptember 2012, the first 1.75 acres was converted into food forest with the work of many volunteers and in2019 we broke ground for Phase 2, adding another 1.5 acres of growing and learning space to the site. In 2020, we intensified our vegetable production so that we could donate to food banks in response to increased food insecurity in our community due to the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is the largest public food forest in the nation.
The BFF's open harvest policy allows any member of the public to harvest from the site for free.
Mission Statement
BFF combines ecological restoration, community building and food production in an urban environment by
- hosting monthly Community Work Parties and many more formal and informal volunteer day
- giving tours to share our model of sustainable urban farming with schools, universities and other interested group
- occasionally hosting special community events, such as harvest festival
- regularly offering classes and workshops on gardening, permaculture, community-building, nutrition, herbal medicine and ecological restoration.