Crucible for Activism: Fighting for Seattle's Community Gardens

The bulldozers are closin' in now on my back garden

No one can explain why I came to be chosen

The bulldozers are closin' in

They've ripped up all the trees

Soon the lorries will be zooming through me cabbages and peas

(The Motorway Song, Black Family)

Seattle's p-patchers and community gardeners have often witnessed bulldozers closing in, both metaphorically and in reality. Threats to these edens, external and internal, have served to push those engaged in peaceful pursuits to take action, organize, fundraise, and learn to work together for common goals.

Here are some of the stories:

Bradner Gardens: Protecting Parks

Bradner Gardens was originally set up by the City of Seattle to provide space for Mien refugees from Laos in the 1980s. A few years later, the Mount Baker garden overcame a serious threat. Long-time gardener and activist Joyce Moty described how the neighborhood banded together to protest the city’s decision to sell the land to a housing developer in the mid-1990s:

“The Southeast Atlantic Community Association – we had a two-year battle with city hall over trying to save this piece of land from being sold for market rate housing. And we went to the mayor's office, talked to city council people, trying to say this is really not a good idea to sell this land, but we were just citizens.”

The group, with the help of a retired city attorney, drafted a citizens iniative titled Protect our Parks and collected 24,000 signatures, more than enough to get on the ballot. With that show of support, the city council voted unanimously to adopt it as an ordinance without the necessity of going to a public vote. The 1997 law states that the city may not sell park land without replacing it in the same neighborhood. 

Today Bradner Gardens Park is much more than its 61-bed P-patch. The space offers a children’s garden, demonstration beds, a bee colony, art installations, and basketball hoops.

Bradner Gardens Park, 2021

Interbay: A Moving Story

One of the city's largest community gardens, Interbay P-Patch, in the shadow of a municipal golf course, had to fight for its existence for a number of years. Established in 1974, the garden ended up moving not once, but twice, to accommodate the Interbay Golf Center. The ordeal lit a fire under the gardeners which spurred them to political activism.

In the late 1970s rumors began flying that the city hoped to, once again, redevelop the public golf course at Interbay, a move that promised to be a vast improvement over the derelict Interbay Golf Park. The available site was huge -- about 47 acres -- and the p-patch, in the middle of the expanse, took up just a bit more than one of these. Nonetheless, it seemed that the small garden was in the way. In 1981, gardeners won a City Council resolution guaranteeing them one acre of garden space. Unfortunately, the exact location for that space was not specified.

One of the original patchers complained in a letter to the Seattle Times:

"Me, now, I've been working the same plot at Interbay for six years. Started with a pile of rocks and clay. You oughta see the soil now, dark and rich and producing enough to feed me and all the neighbors. Seems a shame that next year folks are going to be stomping through this fine soil with their golf clubs. Didn't know they needed such grand soil for golfing." (Grace E. Carpenter, July 11, 1979.)

After several years of negotiation and protest, in 1992, the p-patch moved to the Northeast corner of the landfill site. Gardeners did most of the heavy lifting, ferrying their precious soil and plants over to the new site in wheelbarrows. There they started over, building a tool shed and setting up a food bank collection station. They worked hard to make the clay soil arable. Fruit trees were planted, a few of which are still there. Mary Machala recalls bringing her baby down and setting him up in a playpen while she gardened.

Interbay Two (or New Interbay) lasted only four years, until 1996, before it, too, was threatened by the plans for the yet-to-be-built golf course. Once again, the p-patchers manned the barricades!

Incensed by the threatened move so soon after the last one, gardeners took a proactive stance, orchestrating a campaign that included media outreach, circulation of a short documentary about the peril to the garden, and many, many phone calls to the city council. Long time gardener and site coordinator Ray Schutte remembers urging his fellow patchers to be relentless:

"I said we have to build our defense very slowly and timely. And I bored them to death by playing Bolero at top volume on my little boombox in the garden until they begged -- we get the message! Don't have to tell us anymore. So we basically, by the hundreds across the city, tied up the lines to the city council. I remember one council person told me afterwards, she says, 'You know, it was insane. That's all we did was answer the phone all day long cause there were hundreds of people calling.'"

Despite the effort, the final council vote regarding the p-patch, was 5 to 4 in favor of moving again. However, the group was able to leverage the publicity they had gotten into a highly favorable and formal agreement with the city, an agreement that included

• Being able to choose their own site
• Substantial funds to pay for the move
• Physical assistance for the move
• New soil to replace the clay cover, including a minimum 18 inches of good topsoil
• Raised beds
• An irrigation system
• A design that took into account the methane extraction system installed in 1994.

1997 found the p-patchers at their new site -- Interbay Three. In many respects, the new garden site, in the sunny southeastern corner of the fill, was superior to the previous one. For one thing, it was not directly behind the driving range as once planned!

Gathering Bell, Interbay P-Patch, 2021

The UpGarden: Competing with Cars

"For me, it's my backyard. You put down roots; you literally put down roots. And to do away with it was just a horrible idea! So we decided not to go down without a fight and we started meeting and strategizing how to keep it." (Bob Grubbs)

Perhaps the most unusual and creative location for a p-patch is the UpGarden atop the Mercer Street Parking Garage. The garden has taken up half of the third floor of the underutilized structure since 2012. Gardeners, most of whom live within walking distance, have created raised beds encompassing 86 patches. From their third floor perch they can take in a 360 degree view of the the Queen Anne neighborhood, including the Seattle Center and Space Needle.

Gardening on top of a parking structure comes with its own challenges. To begin with, all patches must be raised beds, since there is no subsoil. And the dirt that is poured into the beds must be lightweight: no clay or heavy compost. Water leakage into the parking tiers below has been an issue. Gardeners have made herculean efforts to re-configure their garden spaces and irrigation practices to mitigate leakage and allow access for garage maintenance.

Probably the greatest challenge, however, has been the temporary status of the garden, its fate wedded to a parking garage, and a relatively old one at that. Not only could the garden space be reclaimed for parking if the need arose, but the whole structure might be razed at some point in service to the Seattle Center Master Plan.

Fears for the future were well-grounded. In the fall of 2019, the tenants received notice to vacate. A professional hockey team (The Krakens) was coming to Seattle and scheduled to debut at KeyArena (now Climate Pledge Arena) in 2021. City planners felt the full top floor of the garage would be needed for parking. Moreover, the city would be rehabbing the somewhat decrepit nearly-60-year-old garage. A Seattle Center spokesperson was quoted in the paper as saying, "The decision has been made...we have to think about the primary purpose of the garage for all patrons of Seattle Center."

Unwilling to give up on their hard-worked plots, gardeners banded together and launched a "Save UpGarden" campaign. A petition was circulated, phone calls made. Lead gardener Barbara Oakrock invited incoming councilmember Andrew Lewis to come to one of their meetings and hear about the garden. Lewis embraced the enthusiasm of the gardeners and went to bat with then-mayor Jenny Durkan to reverse the decision evicting the garden. On New Year's Eve, Lewis was sworn into office at the garden; he used the occasion to announce that the eviction of the p-patch had been indefinitely postponed.

Rooftop views from the UpGarden include the Space Needle and an often empty parking lot with which it shares the third floor of the Mercer Street Garage.

While not currently threatened, the UpGarden's ultimate fate is tied to that of the structure upon which it resides. If and when vague plans to "redevelop" the area around the parking garage take shape, the UpGardeners may find themselves looking for a new home. However, in the interim, they feel  empowered. One gardener declared:

“I’m learning about attending political meetings, and learning how to be an advocate for a cause, which is fun, because it’s not something I’ve done before!”

Ballard: "Give the Gnome a Home

                                   

"I thought about the project: why do I want to be involved? Why do I want to put all my energy into this? It was to preserve community -- the community of gardeners, certainly, but also the larger community, because we really do have neighbors that come and use this space, preschoolers who come and walk through. We do educational programming and we would like to do more. It's not just about who's gardening here, it's a much bigger connection." (Cindy Krueger, fundraising chair)

One of Seattle's oldest community gardens, the Ballard P-Patch, faced a crisis. Early in 2019, after 40 years of continuous gardening, the patch was informed that their landlord, Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, needed to sell the land upon which the garden sat in order to rehab the church and continue and expand their charitable work. The asking price: $2.2 million. Thanks to warm relations between the two entities, the gardeners were given right of first refusal and a short window of time -- about 18 months -- to raise the money. The deadline: July 2020.

With few other options, the gardeners made the decision to leap into a capital campaign. They had little experience, but courageously climbed the learning curve of grantwriting, fundraising, working their connections, and engaging with politicans at every level, as well as with the community. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit them mid-stream, they did not let it slow them down. 

Against all odds, the campaign "Give the Gnome a Home" raised the total needed, with a bank bridge loan tiding them over the gap before all funds could be realized. Major grants from the King County Conservation Futures fund, the State Capital Projects budget, the Cooper-Newell Foundation, and Amazon made the goal a reality, alongside thousands of dollars raised from individuals and businesses in the community. All funds raised were turned over to GROW (Northwest), the garden's fiscal sponsor and now the owner of the p-patch.

Why the gnome? 

"In Nordic folklore, the gnome is the guardian of home and farm. So it just made a whimsical kind of fun mascot for us. A lot of the gnomes have been here since before the fundraising effort, but we kind of amped it up." (Cindy Krueger)

Picardo: The Venus of the Garden

Today the Picardo Venus is more commonly known as the Garden Goddess. She watches over the medicinal herb garden. The ornate tiles that once covered the pedestal are gone, succumbing to weather and the eager fingers of children. The hazards of sharp edges and fallen tiles led to the difficult decision to remove them entirely, along with the tiled altar and plaque that once stood in front of the lady.

The story of the Picardo Venus is one of internal strife, public controversy, and, ultimately, new mechanisms for discussion and consensus building.

In August, 1999, the Picardo Farm (the first p-patch in the city) unveiled a small bronze statue it had commissioned and paid for with a grant from the City of Seattle Department of Neighborhoods. The installation was part of a plan to improve the gardener gathering area near the entrance to the garden. Clearly a symbol of fertility, the sculpture created by artist Steve Anderson launched an avalanche of controversy.

"And you can't believe the uproar when both some of the gardeners and some community people realized that this was the statue of a very, very pregnant naked lady. There were people in the p-patch who felt that it did not belong -- get it out of here! It's an idol! It's blasphemy of some kind. Also there were people who felt that there were children coming into the garden with their families and they shouldn't see a pregnant person and they certainly shouldn't see a naked one." (Eileen Long, gardener)

Opponents used words such as "obscene" and "pagan" to describe the artwork. One woman implied that it might lead to more teen pregnancies. A plaque dedicating the statue to the earth goddess Gaia only added fuel to the firestorm.

Local press coverage was picked up nationally. Someone started covering the statue with garbage bags. Others placed flowers and vegetable offerings on or near the lady. A neighborhood petition was started to remove the figure. To counter this, supporters started an online poll of the gardeners, while a local arts organization jumped in with an online poll of their own. While only a third of the p-patchers responded to the garden poll, the result was 72 to 25 in favor of keeping the statue, perhaps with strategic landscaping.

The scuplture was saved, but, stung by the controversay, garden leadership vowed to use it as a learning experience. What had been a fairly casual way of doing business was formalized in an effort to be more transparent.

"A small group of us said, we can do better than letting this uproar continue. And so we became a steering committee and we created a survey that people in the p-patch could fill out of what they felt was important for us to have in our garden, and over a period of a month or so they came back with 19 ideas. The top of it was a toilet. And the second thing was a new food bank and tool shed, and a children's garden. So the committee agreed the steering committee would turn into a council and people would be invited to be members. And so we established the council and we hired someone to help us create a five-year plan. And the survey became part of our approach." (Eileen Long)

Today the furor is largely forgotten. The goddess still inspires the occasional offering of a bouquet or vegetable. And the farm readies itself for the celebration of its 50th anniversary and that of the entire p-patch program.

***

Not all gardens (and garden art) can be saved. Ultimately, the majority of our city's p-patches are still considerd "interim use" and may run afoul of many different economic and demographic forces. The stories here demonstrate how passion can be channeled into action and, with luck and persistence, bring about more permanent green spaces within the urban grid.

This post is a part of the Seattle Community Gardening History Project. Thanks to Eileen Long of Picardo Farm, Cindy Krueger and Tina Cohen of the Ballard P-Patch, Joyce Moty of Bradner Gardens Park, Bob Grubbs of the UpGarden, and Donna Kalka, Jude Berman, and Ray Schutte of Interbay P-patch for their oral history interviews.