The city would plant everything from raspberries and blackberries to maple trees and hazelnut trees, as well as shoreline plants like katniss (also known as duck potato) and medicinal herbs like echinacea.

Imagine a forest filled with edible plants, berries, hazelnuts, and maple trees, bordered by hiking trails. A place where you can learn to forage and harvest while enjoying a beautiful lake and natural wetlands.

Now imagine that the forest is located on the edge of Minneapolis.

This is what Ryan Seibold and Russ Henry are trying to create near Lake Hiawatha.

Parts of the nearby Hiawatha Golf Course have been closed since a 2014 flood, and are expected to reopen this spring. This spurred the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board to explore options for rebuilding the course to make it more flood resistant.

Yet these plans stalled when it was discovered that the board was pumping more groundwater from the course – and into the already-polluted Lake Hiawatha – than allowed by the state. The city was left to decide whether to keep pumping or let the former wetland reclaim its territory.

Henry, a landscape designer who is running for a Park Board seat, says replacing the course with a food forest would turn a big problem into a big benefit.

The restored wetland would act as a natural filter, blocking major pollutants from storm water sewers and bringing back animals and plants displaced by the course, he says.

Put simply, a food forest is a woodland that uses native trees, shrubs, and plants that are both edible and medicinal. The city would plant everything from raspberries and blackberries to maple trees and hazelnut trees, as well as shoreline plants like katniss (also known as duck potato) and medicinal herbs like echinacea.

Intended to be low-maintenance and self-maintaining once established, the plants are designed to not only build soil but to attract pollinators. (Plants like milkweed are especially beneficial for bees and monarch butterflies.)

According to Seibold, the plants would be available for people to forage and harvest as needed. The idea is to teach people to understand the connection between plants and animals, as well as learn when to harvest sustainably.

“You’re growing the food, but you’re also growing the community around the food,” Seibold says.

There would have to be some sort of foraging training to ensure the plants are available for everyone, Henry adds.

When he got his first job in a nursery 20 years ago, Henry says plants were just green things he couldn’t begin to tell apart. Since then, nature has opened up to him, and he would love for the kids of Minneapolis to have the same opportunity.

By learning more about what they’re able to take from nature, Henry says that people might feel more empowered to grow food in their own yards, to embrace nature and sustainable development, and to encourage friends and neighbors to do the same.

Seibold and Henry say they’ve been getting positive feedback. The park board has until July to decide what to do with the land, but Henry says it may have already decided to reconstruct the golf course.

Either way, the men will continue their work.

Seibold is working with the board to establish a fruit and nut tree orchard on the east side of the lake, and Henry is helping to coordinate a food innovation lab on March 16 in the Food Building in northeast Minneapolis. The event will showcase ideas for ensuring better soil and water quality, as well as new harvesting techniques and agro projects.

FUCK YEAH WE DON’T NEED NO GOLF COURSES

Finally someone is going to do something with misused golf course land!

It’ll be really cool to see how these trees grow in order to maximize access to sun, water, and nutrients. Also, a step towards a sci-fi solar punk future – I’m in.

I sure hope the structural engineers planned for the buildings to increase in mass as the trees grow.

Well, or else for maintenance labor to keep the trees rigorously trimmed to prevent too much increase in mass.  Or both?  (The wikipedia article says the engineering team consulted botanists and horticulturists in planning how much weight the buildings could bear, so it seems likely that the fact that trees grow would have come up.)

This is a pretty cool idea regardless and I hope they get it right.  I wonder if anyone will do anything like this in New York.

This falls in the “I really hope they do it but I’ll believe it when I see it” category for me.

It’s been up for 2 years, inaugurated in October 2014, and still going strong. It’s won multiple awards. 

Here they are building it.

Bosco Gardeners hang around outside the building.

Change of Seasons…

And a view from the place itself. 

It’s funny, I first made that original post on my other blog back in 2013. Amongst the comments were several talking about how people had tried and failed at this before, how they were skeptical, and how they’d believe it if they ever saw it.. At least a couple of comments were people “explaining” why it couldn’t be done.

And now, just look!

Just because something hasn’t been done before doesn’t mean it can’t be. It just means you have a chance to be the first to do it.

Remember that. 💚