Garden VARIETY

P-PATCHES KEEP ISLAND GARDENERS IN SPADES

BY AUDREY NELSON

Imagine that you’ve been gardening your whole life.

You have a big house and a garden full of flowers, fruit and vegetables. But one day, you decide it’s time to downsize. You move to downtown Winslow, into a cozy condo with no garden at all. Although you thought your gardening days were over, there’s a part of you that longs for soil-stained hands and long hours in the yard.

So, what do you do?

If you’re anything like the dozens of islanders in the same predicament, you find a Bainbridge community garden, an assortment of public and private P-patches scattered across the island, each maintained by devoted gardeners and home to a hotbed of conversation, community and care.

P-patches are named after the Picardo family, who owned the land where the first Seattle-area community garden was established. The concept behind a P-patch is simple. Privately or publicly held land is divided into plots, which are then reserved by individual gardeners. These gardeners tend their own plots while also maintaining communal aspects of the garden, such as fencing and raised beds.

One of the best-known Bainbridge P-patches is the sprawling community garden at Battle Point Park. It has 34 plots, all of which are currently claimed, and is overseen by the BI Metro Park & Recreation District. The district also manages a smaller P-patch at Red Pine Park, just up the hill from Pegasus Coffee.

But the community garden landscape extends far beyond the Parks district. Self-described “dahlia nut” Len Beil oversees Wacky Nut Community Garden near Rockaway Bluff. You might know Wacky Nut as the garden behind the

“self-serve dahlia cart” parked outside Hall’s Hill Labyrinth. Beil confirmed that many people who take advantage of the Wacky Nut P-patch are longtime gardeners who have recently downsized.

“We’ve met a lot of wonderful people,” he said. “People that maybe moved from a home where they used to garden to a condo or apartment. So, we’ve made space for them to garden and get their hands dirty.”

Community gardens aren’t just for garden veterans, though. Anita Rockefeller is the owner of Rock Farm Community Garden, on the north end of the island. She and her husband, Phil, started Rock Farm shortly after the 2008 financial crisis, anticipating that local food banks would need more donations. Today, Rock Farm continues to provide fruits and vegetables to Helpline House on Bainbridge and Fishline in Poulsbo. And Rockefeller, who spends most days in the garden, continues to offer new gardeners informal lessons on fertilizer, soil and planting strategies.

Learning together is a common theme among the island’s P-patches. Ed Clemens is the volunteer coordinator for the community at Eagle Harbor Congregational Church in downtown Winslow. When he began to organize work parties to maintain the garden, he noticed that it had an energizing effect on his gardeners.

“During these work parties, one of the things I noticed was all of the chatter,” Clemens said. “People were working, but they were [also] talking a lot, and they were exchanging ideas.”

The concept of exchange is big for Clemens. He’s drawn to “the ethic of reciprocity”—a concept that Robin Wall Kimmerer describes in her book “Braiding Sweetgrass”—and he tries to consciously bring that tenet to his work with the EHCC garden.

“You might start out thinking, ‘OK, I’ve got a garden, I’ve got a little plot,’” said Clemens. “This is gonna supply me with lettuce for the summer or tomatoes for the summer. And you’re thinking about your individual rewards. But soon you recognize that it goes beyond just planting seeds and plants for yourself, for your own consumption.”

“At its heart, a community garden is about giving and receiving,” Clemens continued. “Gardeners give time and labor and receive love and community. It’s no wonder that people have accrued spiritual benefits from spending time in Bainbridge community gardens.”

“I’ve had people say things like, ‘Once you garden at Rock Farm, you don’t want to garden anywhere else,’” Anita Rockefeller said. “‘This is better than church; it’s so mellow.’ I mean, I certainly feel it…I don’t need a psychiatrist. This is my mental health.”