Thanks to everyone who stopped by to say hello and hold chickens at the Spring Tilth Plant Sale at Rainier Beach Urban Farm and Wetlands. It was a wild weather day, but we had a great time! Jake and Lola were also featured in an upcoming segment on the Seattle Channel. Stay tuned for more information!
Stone Soup Gardens is partnering with Urban Systems Design, King County Waste Water Treatment, Seattle Public Utilities, and Dirt Corp to install two cisterns and a raingarden in an educational community build at Carleton Grocery in Georgetown.
Through evening classes and field experience, Stone Soup Gardens is teaching students design and installation techniques as part of the weekly curriculum for Dirt Corps' Sustainable Landscaper Training Program. This project will serve as an example for the students, as well as the Georgetown Community, about the critical importance of storm water management and its relationship to the Duwamish River. For more information, or to follow along with our progress on the project, check out the DIRT Corp Facebook page! Project overhauls are often some of the most fun and challenging to do. This Columbia City home owner was looking for a modern update on their existing back deck. The homeowner was looking to capitalize on the cistern rebate which they were eligible for through the Rainwise Program, and opted to install a cistern next to the house. They also asked for a raised bed to be incorporated into the design, to provide them a bit of growing space which could be accessible from the deck. Our designer, Aaron Buchholz, went to work and came up with a cedar deck with an L-shaped raised bed, new stairs into the home, and of course the pergola! The design also included an elevated base for the cistern, along with an arbor duct which runs from the guttering on both sides of the house, directly into the cistern. Once the design was approved by our client, our team went to work! Thanks to our carpenter extraordinaire, Trevor Madsen, along with the rest of our fabulous crew, we completed the deck, the staining, and the details despite the weather challenges. The result was this lovely pergola which will provide a patch of shade in the summer, a cistern which will collect the rainwater for the garden while helping with storm water overflow, and a deck that will be a wonderful gathering spot for the family for years to come. Sometimes it is nice to look back through the year and see how our projects have progressed, not to mention reflecting on all of the positive changes we've made for people in our community, as well as for our regional environment. Several of these projects include raingardens, which help alleviate the water flowing into the sewer, and filter the water before it flows to the sound. They also include permeable surfaces which allow for filtration and provide a comfortable surface to live on during our wet winters.
This house in North Seattle has been a great transformation. Our designer, Jackie Cramer, did a fabulous job on this design. Even with the smaller yard size, we were really able to pack a lot of wonderful features into this smaller garden space.
The raingarden in the front will be full of edible plants, along with the fence line and arbor running across the front side of the house and the patio. The owners will be able to walk along on their newly installed pathway and pick all sorts of things including figs, kiwi, lavender, sage, rosemary, and huckleberry, just to name a few! We graded the yard and created the small rockery for the rain garden in the front, while also leveling the area behind the fence. We installed a 530 gallon cistern which will capture the roof runoff and flow into the rain garden. We installed the poured concrete patio and arbor which is a gorgeous place to be on a sunny day. We also put in a small patio in the back, and are completing the project by laying the front with a small grassy area for the kids to play, and finishing up with the final installation of the plants. Summer is a busy time here at Stone Soup Gardens. There are so many awesome projects afoot. Here is a little sneak peak of a few of the great gardens we've been working on. Stay tuned, the final pictures are yet to come... These are masonry hugelculture beds done in the "roman-ruin" style. This is a new construction with a landscape design done by the fabulous Jenny Pell. We will begin on this project in August. Huge permaculture enthusiasts, these clients want a cistern which will overflow into the raingarden, and a fully edible front yard.
Come one, come all and see Stone Soup Gardens coop! We will be hosting this year and have lots of new elements in our yard to explore. Hugelculture beds, bike wheel arbors, a kiwi arbor, mushroom beds, a newly installed cistern, and a laundry greywater system, not to mention all of our wonderfully edible native plants!
Purchase your tickets today! See you on Saturday, July 11th! With all of this lovely early summer weather, we've been busy installing gardens of all shapes and sizes. For the last few weeks, we've been putting the finishes touches on a lovely property near Lake Washington. We've installed the raingarden and will be wrapping up the project soon. It's a lovely space with the crisscrossing arch pathways, the front and center raingarden at eye level as you pass by on the street, as well as the nestled entryway. For this garden, we included a nice mix of plants including ferns, bleeding hearts, and just to keep things edible, strawberries! Once it begins to fill in it should be a lovely mix of color and texture for this unique space. Stone Soup Gardens has truly awesome clients. Every so often we like to check back in and see how their gardens are growing. One of our clients, who also happens to be a neighbor, has been consistently adding improvements to their garden year after year. We still have a few projects to go, including adding a couple of railings, finishing up the stairs, and planting out a few more areas. The improvements have been enormous, and it is wonderful to see the place taking shape. For a look back at the project over the last year, check out the blog posts HERE and HERE. |
This is how Stone Soup Gardens rolls - check out our blog for current, upcoming, and past projects, events, and other super cool stuff worth mentioning.
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