Summer Partnerships Take Tilth Learning Into Community

By Lisa Taylor, Children’s Program Manager

Seattle Tilth is collaborating with three fantastic community partners this summer to offer organic gardening education to targeted populations in the Seattle area.

Downtown Parks

City residents can learn about gardening and composting in a three-part series called Urban Vegetable Gardening and Composting at downtown parks.

Throughout the summer and early fall, attendees learn about container veggie, salad and culinary herb gardening and how to setup and run a compost system designed for apartment and condo dwellers.

This is the third year that we are working with Seattle Parks and Recreation and the Downtown Seattle Association to offer classes at downtown parks. They are free and take place at:

• Victor Steinbrueck Park
• Freeway Park
• Occidental Square
• Cascade Playground
• Belltown Cottage Park

Find these classes in our class listings.

Atlantic Street Center

 The Seattle Tilth Children’s Garden will again be partnering with the Atlantic Street Center to offer our Teaching Peace Through Gardening program to students attending summer school.

Atlantic Street Center is a nonprofit organization which provides academic assistance, early learning, parent educationand support, leadership development and mental health counseling to more than 3,000 multi-ethnic, low-income families in Seattle’s central and southeast neighborhoods.

Atlantic Street Center’s summer academy has morphed this year into a joint venture with Seattle Public Schools called 2013 Math Academy. Rather than work with second graders, as we have for 13 years, this summer we have an exciting opportunity to work with incoming ninth graders.

Each week of the academy we will work with 50 youth at Aki Kurose Middle School to grow a container garden, explore soils and composting and provide organic gardening and science enrichment activities.

P-Patches

Since 2001, Seattle Tilth and P-Patch have been working together to offer a basic organic gardening series to P-Patch gardeners.

This year, a four-class series helps new gardeners learn some of the best ways to plan, plant and maintain their gardens while maximizing the use of their space and increasing their harvest.

The classes are held throughout the season at Magnuson P-Patch in northeast Seattle and at Bradner P-Patch in south central Seattle. They are free and exclusive to P-Patch gardeners.

We plan to expand our partnership by offering classes that encourage children and youth to get involved with gardening at P-Patches, and to develop a garden mentorship program that will pair new gardeners with experienced gardeners at their P-Patch.

These summer programs allow our garden educators to work in the community and explore the many ways that urban dwellers can grow edible plants and flowers.

Working with our summer partners allows us to reach out to diverse area residents and to introduce garden stewardship to a new group of gardeners.