P-Patch Community Gardens

Belltown

Making the Dream Reality

When the "P-Patch 20th Anniversary Time Capsule" was buried in July of 1993, soil samples were included from all thirty of the P-Patch sites. Some people thought the Belltown canister was empty; granted it had no soil, but it was full, full of the dream to come. The dream had been growing for four years and although ground breaking is still ahead, the Friends of a Belltown P-Patch had already achieved a phenomenal amount. They had miraculously convinced the City to buy the site for open space preservation, to build a community garden. Not too hard, when you consider the lot was the only, last, and final unpaved lot in the whole Denny Regrade. But when you consider the process for nomination, the public meetings, the competition for funds, what is left is nothing short of a miracle.

The "Friends of a Belltown P-Patch " are believers in miracles. The garden-to-be is now home to the homeless, a focal point of a neighborhood working for social equity, a testament to the essential connection to the earth. The garden design strongly reflects Belltown: the artists, the condo dwellers, light industries, social services, and green guerillas. Urban green guerilla tactics could describe the action s of the "Friends"; chalk sidewalk paintings preceding public hearings, weekend billboard reclamations, plywood sunflowers, bee bonnets, and courtships with the media. All of these are stones on the path to the garden. The stones for the path are laid. The garden will soon follow.