Here at Stone Soup Gardens, we’ve had a busy and very exciting start to this new year. With many new residential and community projects on the horizon, our team has dove into educational opportunities to better serve our community.  

Leading the Year with Learning RainWise
Although Jake got to facilitate the inaugural Rainwise Academy last year, 2020 was dry for rain gardens at Stone Soup. So we were grateful to kick off 2021 with an edible rain garden installation! We had a wonderful opportunity for the whole team to share knowledge on the installation of rain gardens on a residential site. Guided by RainWise contractor resources, we went over the why and the how of rain garden construction including plumbing material standards, how to plan a rain garden’s depth and size, how to choose plants, and how to create the best drainage and overflow systems. It was a fun collaborative session co-facilitated by our three experienced installers. This impromptu training has ensured that every single one of our team members has intricate knowledge of the design and installation process for RainWise rain gardens.

Fruit Tree Pruning Workshop
We love getting to care for trees, and we love to further our knowledge of how to do so. As part of our team’s monthly education, we had the awesome opportunity to chat with Barb Burrill, an active orchardist involved in the Tilth Alliance, the Seattle Tree Fruit Society, and other groups that look after our city’s plentiful fruit trees. We had an extensive conversation about specific care regimens for all different kinds of fruits, what time of year is best for different kinds of maintenance, and how best to talk to owners of fruit trees about taking care of them. Some of our team has continued to engage and collaborate with Barb and the Tilth Alliance through consistent pruning sessions.

​Water Brings Life
We are excited to share our ongoing collaboration with Highline United Methodist Church in Burien. In 2018, we began work with Highline UMC to design the Hazel Valley Community Garden, which aims to improve stormwater mitigation, increase food access, bring neighbors together, and build healthy soil. In 2019, we returned to collaborate with the Nature Stewards to design and install two edible roadside rain gardens, with Tilth Alliance Soil and Water Stewards to build 30 raised vegetable beds in the community garden, and with King Conservation District to fill those raised beds with Hugelkultur fill. You can learn about our involvement at Hazel Valley Community Farm on our portfolio, as well as in KCD’s blog. 
This year, we are returning to this site to dive into the next phase of their community installation, a rain-harvesting irrigation system! We will be installing a 6,000 gallon system that will help irrigate the community farm and the growing food forest. ​
See below for photos of our past installation work at this site, or see our portfolio for more. 

Earth Justice Now!: Building Intersectional Community Spaces
UW Kane Hall - Seattle
1:30 pm, Room 220 - Access and Equity
http://www.northwestgreen.org/single-post/2018/10/06/Earth-Justice-Now-Building-Intersectional-Community-Spaces

Tahmina Martelly, World Relief Fund 
Kyla Rynard, Alleycat Acres 
Jake Harris, Stone Soup Gardens (moderator)

Join Kyla Rudnik of Alleycat Acres, Tahmina Martelly of World Relief Seattle and Jake Harris of Stone Soup Gardens to learn about two community development projects focused on Social Justice and Food Access.

Wetmore Community Farm:

Wetmore Ave was a dead end S-DOT street covered in knotweed that Alleycat Acres opened up and developed into a community farm and food forest. Wetmore Community Farm now is a food hub of an elementary school, the food bank, low income senior housing and a neighborhood in the rapidly changing Rainier Valley.

Paradise Parking Plots:

A recently de-paved church parking lot in Kent is being transformed by World Relief Seattle into a habitat space, a GSI demonstration site and a welcoming community farm for over 50 refugee families.  

Both projects had ribbon cuttings this year, and both projects are taking a whole systems approach to their development.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand how two amazing organizations are achieving their goals of creating spaces that engage currently marginalized communities while bettering the planet.
• Recognize the challenges and successes each organization had in engaging the community and making these projects real for them.
• Understand the challenges and successes around developing two neglected spaces: through funding, permitting, networking, and construction.
• Understand and feel empowered to incorporate equity, justice and whole systems thinking for planning, implementation and operation of public spaces into their own projects.

ALLEYCAT ACRES CELEBRATES COMMUNITY FARM AT FALL FESTIVAL
​by Carolyn Bick
October 18, 20218
Link to article

Beneath a tent along the little lane at the back of South Estelle Street, children painted freshly picked pumpkins, as others eagerly fed and petted chickens in a mobile coop a few feet away. Though neither the coop nor the tent were permanent, greenery surrounding the was: the lane is the site of Wetmore Community Farm, and Saturday saw the farm’s official grand opening.

Run by Alleycat Acres, the free community farm has been open since 2015, but, as Farm Coordinator and Program Director Kyla Rudnick explained, this year marked the end of any major projects on or clearing of the land.

The City of Seattle grant-funded farm originally opened, because a family who lived next door was tired of seeing the derelict land and got in contact with the organization.

“We started holding community meetings in the neighborhood to see if people were interested in a community garden, and what they wanted to do with the space and went from there,” Rudnick said. “We’ve been holding events here for about three years. … Now, we just have some more planting to do, and start maintaining the site.”

The farm is run in partnership with the Rainier Valley Food Bank, Senior Housing Assistance Group, the Downtown Emergency Service Center, and Stone Soup Gardens. In the years to come, Rudnick said they hope to get more of the community itself involved. Having the space serve as a community garden is important, she said, because there isn’t any green space like it in the immediate area. While that isn’t necessarily a problem for younger people, it can be a problem for seniors.

“We have a lot of senior citizens who live in the neighborhood, so having that green space where they can walk is really important,” Rudnick said. “Of course, all the food that we grow here is going directly to neighbors. … There are grocery stores around here, but having free, fresh produce is, of course, a boon to any neighborhood, and especially here, where we have such a dense neighborhood.”

Garden neighbor Plekeo Douangdara said she and her husband enjoy gardening, and that she walks around the community garden “all the time.” She’s been gardening for 30 years, she said, and is excited to contribute seeds and plants to the space.

“I have a lot of seeds, like Asian corn, Asian pumpkin, eggplants,” Douangdara said. “She said, ‘Okay, you can plant!’ … Very cool. Before, nobody wanted to go in here … but this year and last year is better.”