Garden in International District uses farming for justice

There is a space in the International District of Seattle where low-income elderly immigrants from Southeast Asia can grow their own vegetables.

This space is known as the Danny Woo Garden. While its demographic may be more specific than others, it is one of many community gardening spaces in Seattle.

The Department of Neighborhoods' P-Patch Program provides 71 sites for Seattle residents to plant and tend to their own crops. Though anyone is allowed to grow at a community garden, low-income and immigrant populations are often given priority.

"To me community gardening is a chance for people to take a break from the city without having to leave," says Sean Baird, senior theology and religious studies major and Danny Woo volunteer. "You can see skyscrapers and stuff, but you are in nature and it has biodiversity; it's a whole different landscape."

Baird has been a Danny Woo Garden volunteer for more than a year. He spends five hours a week during the school year and 25 hours a week during summer landscaping, planting, transplanting and performing general garden maintenance as well as working on special projects.

Recently, Baird has been helping to develop a garden for children at the Danny Woo, another target group of the P-Patch Program. According to Baird, the children's garden will teach youth agricultural techniques while establishing an inter-generational connection in the garden.

Community gardens provide a cultural outlet for their clientele. At the Danny Woo garden, many gardeners practice traditional gardening techniques from their home countries as well as plant and carry seeds that are unavailable in the U.S.

"They are growing food with their own hands," Baird says. "It is something to do for them, and it gets them outside while engaging their tradition of food culture."

More than 4,000 gardeners tend to more than 2,000 plots in the P-Patch Community Gardening Program. Food banks receive seven to 10 tons of produce from community gardens, as 40 percent of gardeners donate at least once a month.

A 2007 survey revealed that 55 percent of community gardeners come from low-income backgrounds and that 77 percent have no gardening space where they live.

According to Baird, community gardens provide opportunity to practice food justice. By producing food locally, it becomes possible to avoid importing food grown in potentially unsustainable ways from thousands of miles away.

With a dozen community gardens in the planning stage and with more than 1,900 people on the waiting list for a plot, the future of community gardens is blossoming.

"Community gardens provide a green space for anybody who wants to visit as well as food for people," Baird says. "In a temperate, controlled, human-created environment it is kind of nice to step out of that and see that there are bugs, plants, weeds and that we are not necessarily the only things in the city.


Matt may be reached at fieldsm1@seattleu.edu