Linden Orchard
Features
- Accessible Raised Beds
- Giving Garden(s)
- Orchard
About The P-Patch
The Anatomy of Building a P-Patch
(submitted by Pam David & Jim Sykes, Linden Orchard P-Patch community gardeners)
The idea for the Linden Orchard Park and p-patch originated in 1994. The real beginning of Linden Orchard was November 9, 2000. That was the proud day when Seattle voters approved the Pro Parks Levy, giving the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation (SPR) authority to purchase several identified vacant land parcels. These purchases saved the parcels from certain development into town houses and condominiums. The Linden Orchard P-Patch is located at 6701 Linden Ave N. When SPR purchased the property in 2001, it had been a vacant and unused orchard for over 50 years. It was 14,800 square feet of the most beautiful ivy, morning glory, and Himalayan blackberries one can imagine. Ivy trunks as thick as your arm. In fact, the weight of the ivy pushed over and up rooted 80+ year old apple trees. This was a BIG project, physically and bureaucratically. It took a village to build the Linden Orchard P-Patch.
The garden layout was done by volunteers with the help of Seattle Department of Neighborhoods P-Patch staff. The slope was difficult to deal with for amateur landscape designers but, in the end, modifications were made to make it all work. There was a core group of about a half dozen people who spent many volunteer hours pulling the garden together.
The Cob Tool Shed
We love our Hobbit-like cob tool shed; It's unique and beautiful. We thought we could build it in about four or five weekends. We thought we could build it at no cost with sand and clay mined from the site. We thought wrong! Our talented and dedicated Catherine Burke worked countless hours, with many volunteers, to build up the 10 inch think walls inch by inch. It took us almost a year to finish the building after taking a hiatus over the cold winter months. A prefab tool shed would have cost the same and would have been much faster. But, we would have missed out on the experience of actually building the first cob building in Seattle.
Get Involved!
If you are interested in designing, building, or gardening in this or any other P-Patch, find out more about the P-Patch sign-up process here. To sign up as a P-Patch participant, call (206) 684-0264, email p-patch.don@seattle.gov, or sign up online.