Seattle – its people, places and things – offers a rich history of caring and nurturing. No better example of that is the city’s community garden program simply known as P-Patch.
Here is the story about its beginnings, growth and impact across this great city.
Take yourself back to 1970. Protesters urged America to make love not war, the breakup of The Beatles shocked the world and Earth Day was observed for the first time.
That year University of Washington graduate student Darlyn Rundberg, inspired by a fledgling back-to-the-earth movement, asked a Seattle farmer if she could use a corner of his Wedgwood land to start a community garden. Orazio Picardo agreed to the idea and the first crops – maintained with the help of elementary school students and their families – were a success, planting large plots of beans, broccoli, cabbage and potatoes.
The initiative gained steam after Rundberg befriended City Council candidate John Miller (later to win election to council before becoming a U.S. Congressman). Together, they devised a plan where the city would lease the farm at the cost of Picardo’s annual property tax (reportedly about $700 a year) and hire a master gardener to support the pilot program. Even the city’s mayor, Wes Uhlman, had his own garden plot.
Describing the farm-to-table community garden, the Post-Intelligencer wrote in 1973, tongue-in-cheek: “The next change to Seattle’s skyline may be ears of corn between the Seafirst Building and the financial center as Seattle possibly turns back to the earth.”
A year later the P-Patch Program had officially taken root – the first of its kind in the nation – with some 2500 participants across 10 gardens Seattle-wide. In 1975, the city purchased the 2 ½-acre plot from the Picardos for about $80,000.
The “P” in P-Patch? It was the city’s way of commemorating the unselfish actions of the Picardo family to welcome neighbors onto their land.
By 1993, the gardening-allotment program was the largest in the U.S. If you look for the 89 community gardens today, they are dotted everywhere in our city, with concentrations in Capitol Hill, Holly Park and High Point. More than 3,000 individual plots are tended, producing fruit, vegetables, herbs, plants and flowers.
There is a special sense of pride among the gardeners. They share similar attributes of accomplishment, enthusiasm and community spirit for the work and love put into the gardens.
Some 15 acres of P-Patch gardens cover the city, contributing well over 40,000 pounds of produce in 2021 for meal programs and food banks in Seattle. Donated food helps groups such as Byrd Barr Place and FamilyWorks provide fresh, locally grown fruit and veg to people experiencing food insecurity.
The city also works with some P-Patch gardeners to permit the sale of their harvests within a program called Market Garden. Farmers can set up produce and flower stands on-site as a means to profit from their efforts. Locals benefit too by having access to the freshest food and blooms at a lower price.
One of the more interesting P-Patch gardens is in Belltown. More than 25 years in existence amid a mostly concrete-and-steel neighborhood, the patch of land on Elliott Avenue features about 35 sectioned gardens lovingly tended and a contributor of 250+ pounds of produce a year to local food banks.
The Belltown P-Patch sits next to three historic cottages that once housed maritime and cannery workers. With running water, indoor plumbing and electricity, the cottages were a rare find in the early 20th century when they became available for sale. Half of the original six homes were razed in the 1960s, with the remaining residents planting a garden in their place. By the 1980s, a group called Friends of the Belltown P-Patch helped to raise enough money to buy the lasting cottages in 1995 and formally establish the P-Patch. The city since purchased the cottages (one of which is pictured behind a P-Patch tulip garden) and designated them as Seattle Landmarks. The cottages are believed to be the only single-family residences to remain in Belltown/downtown Seattle.
A cross-section of Seattle residents — young, old, families with small children, retirees, different ethnicities and professions – tend to their gardens across the city. At each P-Patch, the city attempts to provide seed, mulch, soil, water and access to tools.
In addition to harnessing the land and learning about agriculture, the patches of soil provide a rare opportunity in an urban setting to cultivate friendships, cooperative ventures and stronger neighborhoods. The Indigenous habitants – Coast Salish, Stillaguamish, Duwamish, Muckleshoot and Suquamish – would be proud of these efforts and symbols of community.
The patches are open to the public to enjoy but the harvests remain the rightful owners of the farmers.
There is reportedly a waiting list to get a plot. Learn how to sign up and tend your future plot or look into creating a new P-Patch in your neighborhood.
The seeds of a wonderful idea – germinated more than 50 years ago – continue to deliver harvests of food, flowers and forever memories.