Imagine a city in which every yard is a lush, green woodland of apple trees and cherry blossoms playing canopy over flowering hedges of raspberries and sprawling ground nuts. Wild onions and Jerusalem artichokes mingle with woodland strawberries and a dozen varieties of mint. Perennial chicory and broad-leaved comfrey collaborate to cover the bare earth of an eroding slope and fertilize the soil while they're at it. Birds, not seen in Cleveland for generations, flit from tree to ground to windowsill. And all of this completely self-regulating - no pesticides, no herbicides, and no need for artificial fertilization. All of it, every square foot, sustainable, perennial, edible and free.

Imagine an urban core, right here in Cleveland, where instead of unmown and unmanaged city lots, a beautiful and permanent relationship exists between people and the land, with enough fresh food and clean habitat for humans and wildlife to coexist in harmony. Where the worst, and most lasting effects of poverty and of pollution are abated by nature's giving hand.

Impossible? Not by any limits other than our own. Ecologists and agriculturists have been creating perennial food forests and designing self-sustaining, low-to-no-maintenance gardens and orchards for over 30 years using the principles of permaculture. Long before that, so-called "primitive societies" had mastered many of the same techniques.

Experience, science, historical perspectives and hard work have brought us to a present in which real alternatives exist to inorganic, unsustainable agricultural practices. With your support, we can begin to bring those practices to bear on our present environmental and economic challenges.