Ideas: JAMming, Honey bee Haven competition, 99 Tools for Actions, and the Edible Pocket Woodland

First, local forager, Asiya Wadud of Forage Oakland, will be making and exchanging jams, marmalades, jellies, and syrups at the Temescal Farmers' Market on Sunday, February 22, 2009. I recently exchanged a lemon steeped nocino (a friend of Italian heritage suggested the lemons) for a nocino made with walnuts from Delaware Street. The provenance of my walnuts are Parker Street and an unknown location (I exchanged garden herbs for walnuts).

Too late! The deadline for the UC Davis Honey Bee Haven garden design competition was yesterday. Anyway, you can read about it here and here.

The Canadian Centre for Architecture is hosting the Tools for Actions exhibition from 26 November 2008 - 19 April 2009. The theme: actions that "instigate positive change in contemporary cities around the world." 99 actions are available for viewing. I read about Tools for Actions at Curbed SF; the website mentioned Amy Franceschini's Victory Gardens 2008+.

Maybe I should submit the Edible Pocket Woodland concept? What do you think? Here's the idea:

Recent academic scholarship and news reports link the purchase of locally grown food to climate-neutral food provision. Also, locavore has entered our popular lexicon; a person that eats locally, generally within a 100-mile radius of home. In this discussion, the primary food plants of concern tend to be annual crops or herbaceous perennials, the types of food grown in home gardens, community gardens, and sold at farmers’ markets. Fruits are sold in markets but tend to be rare in home and community gardens in comparison to the amount of vegetables that are grown. The addition of fruit and nut trees to the urban landscape offers tremendous ecosystem benefits ranging from climate cooling and rainwater capture to wildlife forage to local food provision.

The specific proposal is the Edible Pocket Woodland; the (in)tended integration of habitat and ecosystem services with food provision in neighborhood settings. Annuals and herbaceous perennials are included but are not the dominant vegetation type. The concept is inspired by Robert Hart’s “forest garden,” Thomas P. F. Hoving’s “vest-pocket park,” and Sara Stein’s “pocket woods.”

The arrangement of plants would mimic the layers found in a forest ecosystem similar to Hart’s design. The scale and location of the Edible Pocket Woodland within the urban fabric is modeled after the vest-pocket park; it requires small parcels within neighborhood settings. Finally, the aesthetic would be reminiscent of Stein’s pocket woods; a wooded landscape that acknowledges safety concerns by allowing views through and around taller vegetation.