Paradise Parking Plots is hosted at Hillside Church in Kent and is a project with World Relief Seattle. The goal is to transform 2 acres of parking lot into a community farm for the surrounding refugee population which will become a hub for community building through food. Designed by Stone Soup Gardens, Paradise Parking Plots will be a powerful demonstration home to the first raingardens in Kent, will capture part of a 30,000 square foot roof into large cisterns, and will help to turn a natural spring into a habitat pond. (The stream currently runs across the pavement and into a storm drain.)
On June 23rd, they are hosting a volunteer party led by the employees of Turner Construction who will be de-paving and releasing the earth from the confines of asphalt. It's going to be ground breaking! They are asking for additional help from the community to aid in this work, all are welcome and there is much to do. Please RSVP to Tahmina Martelly at TMartelly@wr.org so that enough safety gear and lunch can be provided. Outdoor living is something we all strive for more of here at Stone Soup Gardens. One of our clients has realized this in a truly spectacular way. Having installed two cisterns a couple of years ago, our client came back with dream plans of building an oasis with a hot tub and outdoor shower to replace her existing uneven grass backyard. This spring we returned to put in a brick paver patio to connect the shower and hot tub, a sloping pathway, and a cute little corner raingarden.
While it was a mucky and unpredictable time to create a level patio during the wettest spring season we've ever had, we think it turned out beautifully. It is one heck of a relaxing outdoor hideaway. With Seattle being hilly, yard space is often sculpted around unusual terrain. We see this fairly often, and find many owners that are at a loss on how to take full advantage of these uneven spaces. As well as being difficult to envision, the spaces are generally hard to tame, manage, or manipulate into something worth enjoying. Stone Soup Gardens loves these kinds of challenges. Whether you have a steep slope, a soggy pit, or a hilly blackberry divide, we can turn your unused space into something for you and your family to enjoy. We can create a functional area for growing edible plants, or create a level retreat for those sunny spring and summer days. One of our clients in Columbia City has just such a space. While the yard area itself is fairly level, it is raised up sharply on a hill overlooking the street, and the backyard was a bramble patch. Seeing the unused potential of the area, our client contacted us to see what we could do. Hence, the great berry wall came into play. The great berry wall was built using downed timber from a local contact. We had the majority of the logs cut to a specific size, while others we trimmed to create easy step access in and out of the raised bed. This allows for ease of picking as the berries come into season, as well as for watering and pruning once summer and fall roll around. We planted the raised bed out with different types of raspberries, strawberries, gumi berries, lingon berries, thimbleberry, chilean guava, lavender, and sage, as well as espalier apples and pears, chives, and red flowering currant in other parts of the yard. This means that there will be a good selection of plants that stay green throughout the year, as well as those that will shed their leaves during the winter. It also creates a nice color palette for the eyes, as well as flavors for the mouth! For a bit of flare, we also included a bike wheel arbor along the front wall of the house, which was a great way to add interest, while providing a surface for things to climb on. We installed a laundry to landscape greywater system in the front yard which will water the espalier trees and herbs, and in the backyard we installed a cistern to side sewer which will provide water for the raised bed in the backyard. Take a look at the project beforehand: And here it is now:
Last year one of our raingarden installations was featured in a small spot with Ciscoe (of Gardening with Ciscoe) and King 5 for Make a Difference Day 2016. We are so proud! Check out more on the construction of this raingarden HERE.
The design for this garden was by the wonderful Jaqueline Cramer of Earth Care by Design Collaborators. Way to go, team! Not everyone has a perfectly square flat space in which to build a garden. Working throughout Seattle, we often run across weird shapes, angry slopes, and poor drainage issues. For this client, we had a weird space flanked by neighbors, a fairly steep slope, and drainage that we needed to prevent from ending up in our client's home, as well as the neighbors down below. We started by creating a tiered path with stairs that would run the length of the home. To improve drainage we used crushed gravel for the path which will help water seep into the ground, rather than slaloming down the slope into the neighbors backyard. This house also qualified for two rebatable cisterns through the SPU Rainwise Program. Those two cisterns will collect the roof runoff and help prevent additional drainage issues in the yard. Here are a few before pictures as we started on the project. The raised Faswall bed we installed is a great option for homeowners. Attractive, non-toxic, and durable, these beds are made from 60% recycled content and are resistant to mold, rot and decay. A perfect combination for our rainy northwest weather. They are also said to last for centuries, but we have yet to test this theory.
The homeowner, having seen our other flagstone patio work, decided she wanted a mosaic along the pathway. We took this one step further by also designing her a flower mosaic for the stairs. While these pathways are time and labor intensive, the results tend to speak for themselves. FREE Rainwise 101 Workshop
Thursday, October 20, 6 - 7:30 pm Columbia Branch Library, 4721 Rainier Ave S Learn about how rain gardens and cisterns help manage storm water, hear from delighted RainWise homeowners, including our client, Sheri Richardson, and get inspired by slides of their raingardens, meet trained RainWise contractors who can offer a free consultation, learn about big rebates from SPU and King County (up to 100% of the total cost), and get set to take the next step. Interested? Registration website: http://www.sustainableballard.org/register This was a great little project we just completed. Our clients wanted to create a more hospitable space in the backyard in order to attract more AirBnB guests, as well as for themselves. The backyard used to be a sloped, weedy, wet mess. We leveled the space, and created a nice flat gravel patio for outdoor fires, complete with fire pit. Leveling and using the gravel will help keep the space from becoming oversaturated with water during the rainy winters. We also used varying colors and textures of bark to delineate spaces and to add a nice aesthetic appeal in the garden.
To further assist with drainage, we built a dispersion swale which will direct the water as it flows through the gravel. The swale is also a nice visual feature, as we used river rock to mimic the look of a stream bed and logs as a foot stepping path to the outer reaches of the yard. Our clients also qualified for a rebate on a cistern, which we installed along the side of the house. Since the cistern isn't located in a place that creates great water pressure for watering the backyard, we installed a small pump to assist with building pressure, so our clients can water their new space using rain collected from their roof. The best feature of this yard, however, is really our Hugelculture raised bed made from repurposed logs. This arc shaped bed is a lovely focal point for the space, while creating additional seating for that outdoor fire. We are embracing the digital age here at Stone Soup Gardens with our mighty new Instagram Account. Come on over and follow us and see what we are up to. Photos from life, love, landscaping, hardscaping, permaculture, events, and more!
@stonesoupgardens
Hey! Jake Harris of Stone Soup Gardens was featured on the Seattle Channel! Watch the video to find out more about what the Tilth Edible Plant Sales have to offer, including classes, native plants, organic vegetable starts, and camaraderie with your gardening community! Learn how easy it is to grow your own garden, and how effective it can be in creating a collective impact on our lovely Puget Sound. One raingarden, one vegetable garden, and one cistern at a time!
The next Tilth Plant Sale is in May, you can find out more on our Education Page, or by visiting the Seattle Tilth Website.
By doing this, we were able to take advantage of the natural slope of the yard in order to create better drainage to street level. This slope will also assist in retaining moisture for the plants as it moves through the subsurface and into the water table. The water from the roof is now being captured by a cistern which is connected to the side sewer, while also outflowing through a raingarden along the side of the property. This keeps rainwater from overflowing into Lake Washington and the Puget Sound during the wet months, and will provide a great way for the owner to water her new landscape during the summertime. Soon we will be installing a lovely variety of native and edible plant varieties including echinacea, sage, lupine, rosemary, lavender, red flowering currant, nodding onion, bunchberry, and many more! Stay tuned as we continue our work on this project. More photos to come! |
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