Urban Landscape, Native Landscape: Picardo Farm P-Patch

Friday, September 5, 2014

Picardo Farm P-Patch

Picardo Farm P-Patch in September

Picardo Farm P-Patch is the oldest community garden in Seattle. The P in p-patch stands for Picardo. The Picardo family, Italian immigrants who arrived in Seattle in the 1890s, bought this property in 1922 in what had been the Ravenna Swamp & farmed it until 1962. The swamp was essentially a peat bog & the soil here remains exceptionally rich in organic matter. It is one of only 2 historical farms preserved in the City of Seattle. This p-patch & the p-patch program were established in 1973. There are 302 plots on 98,000 square feet owned by the Seattle Department of Parks & Recreation. It is located in the Wedgwood neighborhood of northeast Seattle along 25th Avenue NE between NE 80th & 82nd Streets.

In 2013, resistance to the new policy limiting the size of individual plots was centered at Picardo Farm. It was said that one gardener there had more than 2,000 square feet of space, 10x the size of the average plot. The P-Patch Program sets maximum & minimum plot size for each p-patch based on 2 criteria, the average wait for a plot & the p-patch size. In December 2013, 45 gardeners in 13 gardens (2% of all gardeners) had to reduce plot sizes. Plot sizes are generally 50 to 200 square feet.

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About This Blog

This blog began in 2008 as Metropolitan Gardens to provide information on gardening in Seattle & places like it. Click on Gardening in Cascadia. The blog expanded to include Parks P-Patches Public Gardens in the US, Canada & Europe. Then Nature was added. (The difference between nature & gardens is intent. Nature happens. Gardens are planned.) Many recent posts are not about Seattle, or even Cascadia. They are Urban Landscape: streetscape & architecture. Cascadia is the region including the Cascade Mountains of Washington & Oregon. If you want to contact the blogger, leave a message in comments. Comments are moderated & private messages will not be posted.

Our Land & Climate

The city of Seattle rests between 2 bodies of water: Puget Sound & Lake Washington. Puget Sound is a substantial part of the Salish Sea & a very small part of the Pacific Ocean. The Salish Sea is set apart from the Pacific by the Olympic Peninsula in the state of Washington & Vancouver Island in the province of British Columbia. The dense, wet clouds of the Pacific Ocean travel as far as the Cascade Mountains, near the Salish Sea & not very far from the ocean. East of the Cascades lies the desert of the Columbia Basin. The moist, temperate climate of Seattle extends south to northern California & north to southeastern Alaska. The Pacific Northwest Coast from San Francisco Bay to Cook Inlet shares a flora dominated by evergreen coniferous forest. The central portion, west of the Cascade Mountains, is called Cascadia. The climate is cool & wet from fall to spring, warm & dry in summer. The Olympic Mountains block Seattle from much of the Pacific rainfall. Seattle is drier than the Atlantic coast of North America & northern Europe, cooler in summer & warmer in winter. It lies near the latitude of Paris & Quebec City.