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South Tacoma Business District invests in a workplace garden of hanging baskets By Kathleen Merryman kathleen@tacomaweekly.com
PHOTO BY KATHLEEN MERRYMAN
+9052 <7. Kyle Couture tends to the petunias that have become the hallmark of the South Tacoma Business District.
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Are you and your employer up for the challenge of a workplace garden? If so, we want to hear from you. Tell us the kind of space you have, the work you do, and why you think a garden is a good fit. Let us know how you decided the size and form. Are you going raised bed or in-ground? What is your planting medium? Will you go with food, flowers or a combination? What will you do with the things you grow? What’s your position on garden art? Do you fear gnomes? How about clown gnomes? Over the summer, we will share tips and award prizes. Let us know what you’re growing at work at kathleen@tacomaweekly.com.
The pink wave rolls through the South Tacoma Business District, welcoming to the urban village shoppers, diners and folks who need haircuts. Since 1997, businesses in the walkable center on South Tacoma Way have invested in beauty – and the young people who plant and maintain it. This year, they have spent close to $5,000, about half their annual budget, on 120 hanging baskets of pink wave petunias. The wave petunias work best because they don’t have to be dead-headed said Bruce Peterson, who owns Brown’s Flowers and serves as a director of the business district. For the past three years they’ve gone with the deep pink color for the simple, smitten reason that it is gorgeous and bright and summery. It’s a fresh complement to the public art that tells the story of the workingclass neighborhood built around transportation, from horses to trains, trolleys, even airplanes. It may not be a rich urban village, but that $5,000 is well spent, business district members believe. It sends a message of welcome. “The baskets show that we care,” Peterson said. “The membership buys into it. They enjoy it. They like it. They’re proud of it. The neighbors like it.” He knows that because people like Mary Lewis stop in and thank him throughout the summer. “They always bring a smile to my lips and to my heart,” Lewis wrote in a letter to Tacoma Weekly advising us that we would be missing a good story
if we did not write about the baskets. Smart woman, that Mary Lewis. Lewis aims her thanks at Peterson because he started the basket tradition. “When we started, it was 40 baskets,” he said. “I did them in my greenhouse.” The project outgrew that space, about the time Mount Tahoma High School opened, with a greenhouse and a horticulture curriculum. It was a natural fit. “We buy the plants, soil and pots and take them to Mount Tahoma High School. They have a fabulous agriculture program,” said Peterson. The horticulture students put the baskets together in Mount Tahoma’s enviable greenhouse and have them ready by midMay. “It gives them practice,” Peterson said. After that, the baskets give Kyle Couture a part-time job. Couture, who is 17 and will be a senior at Mount Tahoma, waters the baskets, as his older sister, Alexis Couture, and brother, Justin Pease, did before him. Every day, or every other day, depending on the weather, he hauls his cart, with its 30-gallon vat and its watering wand, on a route around the district, stopping to fill up five times. “It’s the best summer job a teenager could have,” Couture said. “You work for three hours, and it’s usually nice outside.” This year, he said, aphids marched on the baskets and debeautified them for a week or so. The petunias are recovering now. The aphids are not. The waves are rolling on.
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