Forget meadows. The city’s new park will be filled with edible plants, and everything from pears to herbs will be free for the taking. Seattle’s vision of an urban food oasis is going forward.A seven-acre plot of land in the city’s Beacon Hill neighborhood will be planted with hundreds of different kinds of edibles: 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.Margarett Harrison, lead landscape architect for the Beacon Food Forest project, tells TakePart. Harrison is working on construction and permit drawings now and expects to break ground this summer.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.says Harrison.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.writes Robert Mellinger for Crosscut Neighborhood input was so valued by the organizers, 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?says Harrison.