Beacon Food Forest

This guide to the Beacon Food Forest in Seattle starts with a provocation: this Beacon Hill slope, capped over two buried drinking-water reservoirs, was never meant to grow anything at all. It follows landscape designer Jacqueline Cramer and organizer Glenn Herlihy, who picked this city-owned lawn for a permaculture class assignment in 2009, then spent three years on grant applications and meetings before breaking ground. On Groundhog Day 2010, they asked their skeptical neighbors to imagine fruit trees where grass grew.