P-Patch program turns 30



	Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 7, Issue 7, July 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.
	P-Patch Program turns 30 By JAMES BUSH Seattle's community gardeners would like you to drop by for a birthday party. This year marks the 30th anniversary of Seattle's P-Patch community garden program, born from the early 1970s use of the former Picardo family farm in Wedgwood for a children's gardening program. In 1974, the city acquired the former Picardo farm and added another 10 community gardens across the city. The name, P-Patch, was selected to honor the Picardos. Seattle's North End P-Patches will be holding open houses on the evenings of Monday, July 14, and Wednesday, July 16, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Guided garden tours and special displays will be featured. Like the vegetables in the garden, the P-Patch program continues to grow, says Rich MacDonald, program director for the past five years. "We're now at 62 sites and should be at 70 by the end of the year," he notes. "We've generally been adding three to four sites each year." The program originally utilized leased properties, undeveloped city-owned parcels, and unopened street rights of way on which the gardens were considered temporary uses, says Barbara Donnette, MacDonald's predecessor as P-Patch director. "At the time I was involved with P-Patch people used to use the word 'interim' in connection with community gardens," she says. Over the years, some leased sites have been lost to development, but many others have been designated for permanent garden use, while additional properties have been purchased specifically for use as P-Patches. Donnette is now affiliated with the private organization, Friends of P-Patch, which holds title to several sites. "One of the most important things that we do is that we're a land trust," she says. "We own a number of the different sites so that they are preserved forever as community gardens." P-Patch gardeners have also continued the tradition of donating produce to feed the hungry, adds Donnette. The Fremont Public Association runs the Lettuce Link program, which coordinates the delivery of P-Patch produce to local food banks. There is a large garden devoted entirely to growing produce for food banks at the Interbay P-Patch and most of the individual sites have a plot or an individual participant dedicated to food bank gardening, says Donnette, a P-Patch gardener herself. "We all plant something to contribute." Marlene Falkenbury has been a P-Patch gardener since before there were P-Patches. She worked with Darlyn Rundberg Del Boca, who created the original kids gardening program on the Picardo farm. The produce was donated to the needy, recalls Falkenbury, who was "in charge of broccoli" for that effort. "There wasn't even water here," she says. "We had to carry it down in glass jugs." The volunteers on the project, including Falkenbury, were assigned eight-foot-square garden plots for their own use, making them the first P-Patchers. More recently, Falkenbury joined with about 10 other Wedgwood gardeners to create a demonstration garden in a former street end adjacent to the P-Patch. Dedicated in honor of the late Lloyd Mott, a neighbor who gardened on the site for more than 30 years, the demonstration garden is a neat collection of boxed plots with different types of plants gardeners might consider for their P-Patch plots or their own backyards. One box contains 14 different kinds of dwarf conifers. Others contain fragrant plants, grasses, and unusual perennials. Falkenbury has also worked on tougher projects, such as installing a working drainage field in the former wetland. ("You know what we called it in the winter? 'Lake Picardo.'") She and another volunteer learned the basics of drainage from a farmer when they stopped to buy nuts from his roadside stand, then organized 50 volunteers to do the dirty work of digging trenches and installing pipes. Dealing with unusual sites is part of life in the P-Patch. When the Metro sewage facility just south of the University P-Patch was expanded for odor control purposes, gardeners had to take the good with the bad, says Richard Greenberg. "It's gotten better-smelling, but we lost about 30 [garden plots] in the process," he notes. Greenberg, an apartment dweller, has been a gardener most of his life. "I was gardening in friends' back yards, but that got old," he says. "So, they had an opening here and I took it." That was 12 years ago, but his tenure doesn't qualify Greenberg as a University P-Patch old-timer. "There are members here in this garden that have been here 20 to 25 years," he says. Shaugn Huck, a first-year University P-Patch gardener, has a garden at home, but wanted more space to grow vegetables. "They had an open spot and it's relatively close to my house," she says. P-Patches are open to the anyone who wants to visit (provided they don't disturb the garden plots) and are governed with relatively few rules: gardeners can't use pesticides and they must perform a few hours of community service per year (Huck and Greenberg were tapped for interviews while pulling weeds at a University P-Patch work party). There's one additional rule in Wedgwood, Falkenbury adds, as she walks through the original Picardo P-Patch shadowed by a friendly neighborhood cat. If someone is sitting on one of the benches set up at various spots in the garden, "we don't speak to them" unless they speak first, she says. "They could be there for the quiet." P-Patch Open Houses Monday, July 14, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Ballard: NW 85th & 25th NW East Ballard: (Greg's Garden) NW 54th & 14th NW Ballard Thyme Patch: NW 58th & 28th NW Phinney Ridge (Billy Goats' Bluff): NW 60th & 3rd Greenwood: 345 NW 88th Evanston: N 102nd St. & Evanston N Fremont (Whirled Peas): Woodland Park Ave N & N 39th Good Shepherd: 47th N & Bagley N Linden Orchard and Garden: N 67th & Linden N Wed., July 16, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. University District: NE 40th & 8th NE University Heights: 5031 University Way NE Ravenna: 5200 Ravenna Ave. NE Roosevelt: 7012 12th NE Burke Gilman Gardens: 5200 Mithun Place NE Magnuson: 7400 Sandpoint Way NE Picardo Farm (Wedgwood): NE 82nd & 26th NE Pinehurst: NE 115th & 12th NE Jackson Park: NE 133rd & 10th NE Haller Lake: 13045 1st Ave.