Eat All About It

Frndly garden in south SEA, huge lot, gd sun, seeks gardener for mutual fruit+veggie fun.

Could that lot be the right match for “green mama dying to grow her own tomatoes again”? Or for “new gardener looking to cultivate food, friendship, & a productive hobby”?

Only on Urban Garden Share,  a new site hooking up homeowners who have unused garden space with gardeners who have no land. 

Site founder Amy Pennington said the idea came about after she took an intensive gardening course last year with Seattle Tilth. Out of 16 people in the class, four — herself included — lived in apartments. It wasn’t as much an issue for Pennington — she runs her own gardening business, and was writing about the class for Edible Seattle — but she and a friend, Gannon Curran, wondered what the other apartment-dwellers would do. “We went out one night for a drink…the more we drank, the more it was like, “Yeah. You know what we need? We need a website to match people (with land). It’s like online dating, but it’s for gardens!”

The idea stayed with her long after the night was over. She resurrected it months later, in the fall, when she met up with Colin Saunders, who had tech expertise and also grew up around beautiful gardens. “He was able to help me suss out just what I was looking for from a technical aspect. I had a vision in my head but I didn’t know what it meant as far as building it.”

And finally, the site, with this team, launched a few weeks ago. Curent listings for available garden space range from a balcony in Queen Anne with “fantastic morning sun,” to a ready-to-plant raised bed in Ballard, to a west-facing terraced lot in West Seattle, to a 5-acre horse farm on the Eastside with a deer-proof garden space and room for an orchard. Potential gardeners are equally diverse, ranging from the “landlocked landscaper” on the Eastside who “would sell my right lung for some sunnyish ground to grow some veg” to the First Hill resident looking to establish the first garden of her own.

It’s up to the gardeners and landowners to figure out the details, though they provide enough information on the site to gauge whether it’s worth pursuing a match — how much access the landowner is willing to give the gardener, for instance (only on weekdays? Only when the owner is home?), who will buy the seeds and pay for water, whose tools will be used, whether the labor and/or the harvest will be shared. The questions are meant to trigger “how serious it is,” Pennington said, reminding participants that there are still costs involved and details to settle.

Besides answering the required questions — the most significant one, to Pennington, is how many years of experience the aspiring gardeners have — there are no prerequisites for participating in the site, no minimum amount of garden space or set requirements for what to grow. “It’s negotiable, so everyone will have to work together to come up with a plan,” she said.

One person listed a gardening space “for a small fee,” Pennington said, which “is not really what this is all about,” but she decided to leave the ad in place anyway. “Maybe she’ll find somebody, maybe she’ll work something out.” And she doesn’t worry that the project will be taken over by commercial interests. Gardeners “tend to be fairly earnest people,” she said.

Her own experience played into the garden site in two ways. One, in her own business, she often hears from potential customers who are excited about the idea of having someone plant and tend a garden, but are disappointed to hear what it costs to hire a professional to do the job.  ”This is a vehicle for me to push those people, OK, I’m too expensive, but maybe you can share with somebody.” Also, the program is modeled after the share she developed herself with a family in Laurelhurst, her own “little urban garden.”

Pennington knows that somewhere along the way, a gardener might well lose interest in the work partway through the season, or other complications could arise. That’s part of why the service is free — she’s  letting participants judge for themselves whether they’re a good match, not making a guarantee of success.

She has issued reminders that both Mother Nature and human nature will intrude into the best-laid plans. “It’s good to be flexible with your garden and garden partners. Be patient. Be kind. Do unto others and so on and so forth,” she wrote .

About 40 people initially signed up, though the 1,600 people on waiting lists for city P-Patches are getting an e-mail today alerting them it, which should spur more gardeners to sign on in hopes of getting a space this season. 

And the idea has drawn interest from the city of Seattle and from other cities who would like to join in. A few other sites have popped up, she said, and there are a lot of areas looking for ways to get gardeners garden space.

She thinks, she said, “it is something that could continue to grow.”