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Seattle Tilth Gardens
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Seattle Tilth maintains two demonstration gardens, one at the Good Shepherd Center in Wallingford and the other at Bradner Gardens Park in Mt. Baker. These gardens are wonderful teaching tools for the public who may tour the gardens at any time, free of charge, as well as Seattle Tilth volunteers who work alongside staff to install and maintain the plantings.
Our original garden at the Good Shepherd Center was built in 1978 by a group of Tilth visionairies who knew our city needed an urban agricultural center. The Children's Garden was added in 1988 to bring garden education to kids ages one to fourteen. With the support of the Wallingford Chamber of Commerce and the Good Shepherd Center, these volunteers ripped up old concrete play courts and created a garden that has educated and inspired for nearly thirty years. Our demonstrations include year round vegetable gardening, drought tolerant and disease resistant ornamental plantings, yard waste and food waste composting, and soil building techniques.
In 1995, Tilth joined other partners to develop Bradner Gardens Park in the Mt. Baker neighborhood, where we began a second demonstration garden. Bradner Gardens Park is a unique collaborative partnership between City of Seattle Parks Department, Seattle Tilth, Washington Native Plant Society, King County Master Gardeners, Department of Neighborhoods P-Patch Program and neighborhood residents. The park's demonstrations are entirely maintained by volunteers and are 100% organic. The Seattle Tilth gardens showcase raised beds, attracting beneficial insects, swale gardening, soil building, drip irrigation and year round vegetable gardening.
In each of these settings, staff and volunteers tend garden beds of organic vegetables, fruits and herbs. Interpretive signage illustrates environmentally friendly gardening practices, including crop rotation, drip irrigation, cover cropping and ways to encourage beneficial insects.
Community Planning Process for Teaching Garden Improvements
In August of 2007, Seattle Tilth was awarded a grant from the City of Seattle's Neighborhood Matching Fund Program to help support a community planning process for improving our teaching gardens. Through this community process we hope to create a Master Plan for our Wallingford teaching gardens, which include the demonstration and children's garden spaces.