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, and now has a garden consulting/coaching business called Enchanted Garden Consulting. Wedgwood Garden Club always welcomes new members – contact Jacqueline at tppoems@comcast.net for more information on our monthly meetings.
This delightful little fire-hydrant garden can be seen outside the popular Mexican food truck located where Roosevelt merges with 15th Ave NE. The lively combination of buttercup yellow hydrant and bright red poppies shouted out to me as I drove past, and I stopped to photograph it. I assumed the owners of the food truck had planted it, but as the establishment was closed at that time, I couldn’t get any information.
Today as I drove past – maybe a month later – I stopped again and this time had better luck. To my surprise, the young lady in the truck told me that it was put in by the Seattle Parks Department when they installed a grassy island across the road as part of a major traffic revision project. This officially makes it the smallest-ever Seattle City Park!
I hope the city will maintain it, but weeds are already creeping in from one end (I pulled them out). Whatever the outcome, this tiny, joyous little tumble of flowers shows how you can make a garden anywhere. It is a mix of annuals grown from seed (those red poppies! – also Californian poppies and blue cornflowers), and perennials that were planted from pots (yarrow, low-growing sedums, and today’s tall spires of purple liatris). A little clump of ‘Fireworks’ goldenrod would extend the flowering into the Fall and be very low maintenance, and I might just have to undertake that myself, with a marigold perhaps.
With the purchase of a few four inch pots of plants, and a packet of summer sun-loving annual seeds, you could reproduce this little garden in other tiny overlooked gaps and holes, and do the pollinators a good turn too – while I watched today, a bumble bee crawled inside a half-open California poppy. So thanks, Seattle Parks Department, and I hope this inspires people to try it themselves – it has certainly inspired me.
Delightful!