'Spring into bed' got a lot of people out to build gardens on May 8 in a city wide event whose local effort was seen adjacent to the Croft Place Townhomes at 6701 21st Ave. S.W. in the Puget Ridge neighborhood. The work in West Seattle was led by Ariana Taylor-Stanley from the Delridge Neighorhood Development Association.

CLICK THE PHOTO ABOVE TO SEE A SLIDESHOW OF THE EVENT

Taylor-Stanley said, " Delridge is a 'food desert' and there's nowhere to buy our fresh fruits and vegetables, so we're going to grow our own here at Croft Place. The residents here and I have planned this and we're ready to grow some vegetables…It's not stopping today…This garden will continue to grow throughout the season and we'll have more work parties to keep it maintained."

Spring into Bed is a grass roots effort aimed at creating access to food, especially on a local basis. The program's intent is to build Food Justice gardens which effectively remove the financial and logistical barriers to creating this kind of resource. The idea for the event came from Stephanie Saliga, a sustainable lifestyle coach who said," We were going to do a walk to raise money but then I thought that it would be better to do a gardening project where we could get others involved and make it a more sustainable effort." The goal was to raise $13,000 for the project all from personal donations. Saliga spoke at a party after the event held at the South Seattle Community College Arboretum and sought the opinions of the volunteers about how the event could be improved. She said they have plans for another event of the same type this autumn she plans to call "Fall Into Bed."

Local contractor Eagle Rock Construction leveled the lot at Croft Place in advance and a group of 14 people worked on building raised garden beds and replanting some existing shrubbery. This was one of ten gardens built around Seattle all based on self sufficiency, local resilience, and environmentally sound food production. The soil was donated by Cedar Grove Compost and was transported to the site by egreenlandscaping.

The workers had various reasons for joining the work party. One of the volunteers, Marisa Tsaniff said, " I want to know a little bit more about gardening and I'm really interested in rain gardens and capturing and storing water runoff. Also building these collection systems for stormwater. Caitlin Arnold said, "I am a farmer and I like helping to build farmers for people who don't have them."

The land at Croft Place is adjacent to some low income townhomes so the effort was especially meaningful for one of the residents and volunteers, Sandy Rathbun.
"I live here. I'm more or less the resident gardener, and I've been trying to inspire people to grow their own food," Rathbun said. She recognizes the amount of work required and feels a lot of gratitude for those who helped saying, "It's beyond words. It's pretty exciting that all these people are coming out and giving us a hand."

The organizations and people that served as 'captains' for the event included Cascadian Edible Landscapes, Theo Chocolate, 2brownchicks.org, The P-Patch House. The Garden Project, Peder Nielsen, Erinn Hall, Linda Murfeldt, and Seattle Good Food Network.