Jacqueline Houston is a member of the Wedgwood Garden Club and also a Master Gardener of King County. She has been gardening in Seattle for over 30 years. Wedgwood Garden Club always welcomes new members, wherever you live – contact Jacqueline at tppoems@comcast.net for more information on our monthly meetings.
How many of you have sat in the comfortable shade of the future pocket park at 35th Ave NE and NE 86th St, coffee or pastry from Javasti’s in hand, and gazed appreciatively at the small Pollinator Garden running along one side of the woodchipped seating area?
This is a gift to the people, bees and butterflies of Wedgwood from some of us at the Wedgwood Garden Club! All the plants come from my own garden and various garden club members pour a few bottles of water on them now and then. But, these are tough, sun-loving, drought-tolerant plants that pollinators love. (Contact me for a full list if desired.)
We planted it in the Fall of 2022, just before almost 5 months with no significant rain in the summer of 2023. The garden struggled. Rabbits ate some of the species down to the ground, and others couldn’t flower due to stress that first year. This year, however, it has been a glorious cacophony of color, delighting humans and bees alike.
Not much maintenance is required once the plants have grown enough to cover the dirt and minimize weed growth. I come over to deadhead and weed every couple of weeks, and I drop all the cuttings on the ground to create a rough mulch, which further prevents evaporation and weed germination.
Sadly, public parks seldom provide anything much for pollinators. If we’re lucky, the new park plans will provide a few flowering red currants for spring, and that’s about it. Even the bit of maintenance I describe here is more than Seattle Public Parks can provide with its minimal, overstretched staffing – when is the last time you saw someone working in a park? (I was astonished to see so many parks employees in the gardens of New York.) So please, enjoy it while it lasts, before it gets bulldozed and turned into a pleasant, but pollinator-poor pocket park.
How lovely! thank you Jacqueline and other members/neighbors, for your efforts in keeping our neighborhood vibrant and pollinator friendly 🙂
I really love the Pollinator Garden. Thank you for putting it in!
I am part of the Koffee Klatch that drinks coffee in the mornings 0700.
What is the current timing for the new park?
More details can be found on the city’s website. Last updated July 2024.
https://www.seattle.gov/parks/about-us/projects/wedgwood-landbanked-site-park-development
This is a really awesome community resource. I particularly enjoy the Carpenter Bees. I will appreciate it while it lasts, and appreciate the WGC’s hard work to enable it.