Planning for the proposed park on 17th and Folsom is shaping up nicely.

The current design includes such non-standard park fare as a community garden area, an outdoor classroom, greenhouses, rain-collecting barrels, and even “demonstration gardens for wildlife habitat and water conservation”. Holy crap, was this thing designed by EarthFirst?

As if that weren’t enough, the park also features espaliered fruit tree fences and a bioswale! What, you don’t know what those are? Good thing Curbed SF did this thing called “research” that we casual bloggers keep hearing about:

And so you don’t have to look them big words up: a bioswale is a planted filter for water runoff from paved areas, sort of a ditch with a reason. Espalier, originally French and both a noun and a verb, is the technique of training a plant, most commonly a fruit tree, to grow on a grid or a fence.

[via Curbed SF]