Shoreline speakers series: Jenny Pell on April 12

Jenny Pell

Jenny Pell will speak on the Topic: Beacon Food Forest on Thursday, April 12, 2012, 6:30 - 8:30 pm, Shoreline City Hall - Council Chambers.

In January, the City kicked off a five-month speaker series on themes related to the City's Comprehensive Plan Update. Each month, a speaker will present a topic relating to the Comprehensive Plan component that will be before the Planning Commission. The third speaker, Jenny Pell, will focus on Food Forests. The event will be from 6:30 to 8:30 pm in the Shoreline City Council Chambers.

Jenny Pell is a permaculture designer, consultant and teacher, living in Seattle, WA. Recent projects in the Pacific NW include Seattle's Beacon Food Forest, a 7-acre permaculture project on public land right in the center of the city, a 60-acre small farms and permaculture incubator project outside Portland, OR, and most recently a 2-acre food forest and permaculture demonstration garden at Evergreen State College in Olympia.

Jenny and a group of colleagues recently launched a new venture in Seattle called Honeyscapes - designing and installing pollinator landscapes that include honeybee hives, mason bee habitat and extensive bee forage plantings for both insectaries and nectaries. Honeyscapes include beautiful hedgerows of perennial flowers and shrubs, some of them with delicious fruits, that serve many functions - habitat, pollen, bee and bird forage, berries for people, cut flowers, attracting beneficial insects, and helping increase yields in our vegetable gardens and urban orchards.

Tropical permaculture is another passion - Jenny has worked in Central America and Hawaii, and is expecting the head to Suriname this year to bring permaculture whole systems design to a series of new villages being built over the next 5 years.

Following each speaker's presentation, attendees will be invited to mingle and share ideas with staff and other participants. These ideas will be transformed into new goals and policies for the Comprehensive Plan that will guide future decisions made by City officials and staff. The Comprehensive Plan is the primary tool used by local governments to guide decisions regarding the use of land, housing, transportation, community design, economic development, infrastructure and natural resources.

This topic is related to the Natural Environment Element, which will be discussed at Planning Commission on April 5th. To see the proposed Comprehensive Plan goals, policies and analysis for this new Element, please visit the Planning Commission webpage after March 22.

For more information, visit the 2012 Comprehensive Plan Update web page.

Jenny's Websites

• Peraculture Now
• Honeyscapes
• Community by Design