Kessi World

Mindful travel around the Pacific Northwest.

Seattle P-Patch photos — community gift of color In unexpected corners

by

This Pinterest tile shows a bee with delicate champagne colored wings busily investigates the center of a yellow flower bloom in the P-Patch garden. The inner core of the bloom has tight honeycomb stamen while the larger pedals are variegated yellow.

All over Seattle there are patches of green. Parks, wetlands, greenways abound in just about every corner of the city. With an even more careful search, tinier spaces reveal themselves — maybe a vacant corner lot or a critical slope on one of many hillsides. These spaces are known as P-Patch community gardens, and they light up all summer, hosting everything from chard to zinnias to whimsical bird baths.  Named after the Picardo family of the Wedgewood neighborhood, whose urban produce farm helped establish the first community garden in 1973, P-Patch gardens are now all over the city of Seattle.  

I’m most inspired by the P-Patch concept in the way that community members come together to lovingly create a patchwork of green that, to me, offers a symbol of life formed through peace and collaboration. These tiny, yet powerful, gardens are open to the public to peruse, at whatever pace is suitable. Perhaps most poignant is the fact that while the summer months of 2020 brought strife and confrontation with the various protests around Black Lives Matter, members of the community were still coming together to create these green gifts of collaboration all over the city. Some of the spaces, composing a collective 14 acres, even grow enough food to help feed those in need, or raise money to help those in need. How better to showcase this collaboration with nature, and each other, than a display of inspiring photos from a special Seattle P-Patch?

Seattle manages 89 different P-Patch community gardens, covering 33 acres of land.

Today more than ever our country needs more community gardens

The other day while wandering in my neighborhood I came upon a magnificent corner lot profusely flowing with green textures of all kinds, interspersed with splashes of color. Some very flamboyant dahlias, proudly standing high on the stem while other patches, like the cosmos, remained understated but just as beautiful. The door was ajar, as if beckoning me, so I entered into this world of horticulture wonder. The large chunks of sawdust meticulously carpeting the paths in between the raised wood garden parcels welcomed me and for the next hour I was captivated by the treasures of all sizes waiting to be discovered. The following are photos of this garden experience.

Seattle P-Patch photos — nature’s inspiring touch

A photo of a Seattle P-Patch garden. The fence containing all the raised planter boxes is made of metal grating and cedar wood while the planter boxes rise up about a foot off the ground and hold a variety of green leafy plants, vegetable, flowers and other forms of life. In the background, across the street is a vintage bungalow home with sky blue siding and a fireplace that heads up to the blue sky.
Delicate white flowers in bunches of six form a white clump in this P-Patch garden. Green foliage is all around, out of focus, in the background.
Variagated basil leaves pop up with a blend of purple and green leaves and waxy dark green leaves of a different variety of basil out of focus in the background. This photo was taken in a Seattle P-Patch garden.
A view of the P-Patch garden showing an empty flower pot and variety of plants in a series of four planter boxes that are separated by wood chips on the ground. In the background is a picnic table and garden shed.
This wild starfish like plant has rich green leaves and fronds of orangish tentacles with tiny flowers, bursting in every direction.
The tiny flowers of Yarrow plant gather in this cluster of bright pink while a separate cluster of light pink slings just to the side of the plant, which is surrounded by green leafs.
The geometric shapes of the planter boxes in a photo of a Seattle P-Patch garden come to life in this shot that showcases the wood planter boxes surrounded by chips of wood on the ground that create pathways between. One planter box has rich leafy chard while another is full of a variety of colorful flowers. The long rectangular box has a few green onions and pvc pipe support structures in place over a freshly tilled up black soiled open planting space.
An up close shot of a piece of red chard reveals the blood red stalk and veins of the leave, flowing to the waxy green leaves of the branch.
An acorn squash is hiding behind several large veiny green leaves and sits on some rich black colored dirt. The stem is a olive green color and the squash leans up against the board of the raised planter bed of the garden.
As assortment of colorful flowers overtake a planter box in a photo of a Seattle P-Patch city garden. The flowers are a variety of orange, red and yellow colors amongst light green leaves.
A fresh dahlia bloom still tight in the bud gets ready to burst open on the scene of this P-Patch garden. The bloom shows various hues of purple and light green while a fully bloomed bunch of white flowers is out of focus several feet away in the garden.
A white flower, almost like ornate paper origami blooms proudly in the middle of a Seattle P-Patch garden. Another bloom is still tight in the bud and prepares for opening up. The pristine white flowers are surround by rich green leaves.
This photo shows the abundance of variety in this P-Patch garden. Up close are fresh white dahlia blooms and then rich green kale lines the edge of the planter box before the next area of zinnia flowers rise up in to pop out color in the background.
Planter boxes of a P-Patch garden hold a variety of colorful treasures, including yellow marigolds in the foreground and rising kale plants in the background. There is sawdust chips on the ground space between the raised planter beds.
Zucchini blossoms bloom large and proud in the middle of this Seattle P-Patch garden. The two blooms are still tight together in a yellow with green veined flowers while an infant zucchini fruit is taking life int he background amongst the dark green, prickly leaves.
Up close photo of the rich textures of chard leaves growing in this Seattle P-Patch garden. The center, veins of the stock are a lush cream color while the nutrient rich leaves are a bright waxy green color.
An array of bright cherry tomatoes cling to the vine. Several are a rich ripe red while five are lighter orange and two are green and not ripe at all. Several other red tomatoes are in the background on lower branches.
A tight bud of a dahlia, ready to burst out with color in the community garden. The stem and leaves are a purple color while the bud is orange with yellow tips toward the opening of the flower. These photos of a Seattle garden bring to life the feeling of the patch of green.
A brightly colored Dahlia flower blooms proudly in a Seattle P-Patch garden. The pedals are a beautiful orange yellow color with specks of bright red and there are several other flower bulbs around this bloom and more green foliage behind this plant.
An extreme closeup of rich colored purple cherry tomatoes ripe but still clinging to the vine. The tiny fuzz of the vines are on display as well as the out of focus green foliage in the background of the garden scene.
A bee with delicate champagne colored wings busily investigates the center of a yellow flower bloom in the P-Patch garden. The inner core of the bloom has tight honeycomb stamen while the larger pedals are variegated yellow.

Create your own garden space — join the P-Patch program

If you live in Seattle, chances are there is a lovely patch of community garden near you. To learn more about the program, the mission and how to sign up, check out the official site. If you live in a different corner of the world, look into the local form of P-Patch because there’s likely to be opportunities to play in the local soil and encourage new organic life. Now go forth and garden!

Hopefully these photos of a special Seattle P-Patch inspired a quest of urban nature. If you’d like more about parks and gardens, check out the page on the Pacific Northwest as well as this passage on my favorite gardens in the Emerald City.

This Pinterest tile shows a beautiful purple dahlia sheds beauty on this garden. the leaves have specs of darker purple and a few green leaves surround the large flower bloom.