Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 7, Issue 6, June 2003
Copyright 2003 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article and photos below in your research. Be sure to quote the Seattle Sun as your source.
Center raises awareness
about the world of horticulture
By MATTHEW PREUSCH
Turtle-watching at the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horticulture, it is easy to forget you are in a city of more than a half-million people.
But just shouting distance from the sunbathing turtles in the center's Union Bay Natural Area is the noise of Sand Point Way NE, a state highway, and the high bleachers of Husky Stadium.
Tom Hinckley bikes the area's gravel paths every day on his way between his Laurelhurst office and the main UW campus.
Since becoming the center's director in 1999 he's developed a fondness for the area's urban marsh, which is slowly returning to a natural state after decades of use as a dump and parking lot.
"It's wonderful," Hinckley said. "You can rehabilitate these areas."
The natural area is just one component of the center, which the University of Washington opened in the 1980s to "apply horticulture to natural and human-altered landscapes to sustain natural resources and the human spirit," according to its mission statement.
In practice, that has meant a variety of things. Aside from the Union Bay area, which has striking views of Mount Rainier on clear days, the center also co-manages the much larger Washington Park Arboretum.
Originally, Hinckley's goal when he became director had been to make the center financially self sustaining, but that effort was smashed in May 2001 when arsonists destroyed much of the center's Merrill Hall.
"Since the fire, the mission has been more to get (the center) rebuilt," Hinckley said.
Meanwhile, the center continues to host a number of gardening groups, among them the Seattle Youth Garden Works, which gives city youths a chance to grow their own vegetables and sell them at farmers markets.
In June, the Center of Urban Horticulture is presenting a tour of rockeries and rock walls in the Wallingford neighborhood. The event will be hosted by Phil Wood, a Seattle Times gardening columnist who lives in Wallingford, and Wade Bartlett, owner of Rock Solid Landscape.
It is one of several classes and lectures, from garden tours to botanical illustration, the center offers every month. Most of the classes have a small fee, but some of the tours are free.
At the center's Laurelhurst campus, gardeners can enjoy a number of demonstration gardens, from an Olmsted plot, celebrating the plant preferences of famed landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., to a mock wetland, thick with native riparian plans, in a shady grove behind the center.
One particular tree, the Cornelian Cherry, has been getting lots of attention lately. Many from Seattle's Eastern European community come pick the trees' tart, red berries, which they make jam or liqueur.
The center was planning to cut down some of the trees, to discourage the pickers, which Hinckley said had become "pretty aggressive," even climbing into the trees' upper branches. "We had to call campus police once," he said.
After some neighborhood residents protested on the trees' behalf, Hinckley said the center had a change of heart, and has decided to work with the casual harvesters.
"We've decided at least for the next year not to do anything to the trees," Hinckley said.
***
The Center for Urban Horticulture is located at 3501 NE 41st St. For more information call 543-8616.