It was a big payday for the ArtsWest Playhouse and Gallery recently when executive director, Alan Harrison, accepted a $6,500 check from the West Seattle Garden Tour at a reception.

Incoming Garden Tour president, Clay Swidler, presented the gift, 50 percent of the net proceeds raised by the 13th annual "Art of Gardening" event held July 22.

The tour featured a variety of spectacular gardens adorning eight West Seattle residences. The garden tour guidebook reads like a 5-star restaurant menu. For instance, the Hoaglund Garden, on Southwest Admiral Way, offers a creek bed that, states the guidebook, "leads to a lilly covered pond flanked by hardy banana."

The guidebook describes the Cacy/Black garden on 35th Avenue as a "small slice of Monet's Giverney with Kyoto influences," and, "...take time to notice the small, Husky inspired, purple and gold, cut-flower bed and native plant garden bountiful with ferns, huckleberry, salal, and Oregon grape." It mentions bird feeders and bat houses.

Bat man, Curt Black, a geochemist for the Environmental Protection Agency, explains, "I'm a 'chiropterologist.' I study winged mammals. After Seattle cut down many of its trees a hundred years ago, bats lost their habitats." He proudly points out that his bat habitat is certified by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. He has observed that the bats his garden attracts hang right side up.

"It's all of us who hang upside down," he said wryly.

Swidler spoke on behalf of current president, Jamie Nugent, who was instrumental in organizing the tour, but was in Australia on business during the reception. Swidler announced to the cozy crowd of nearly 40 board members, beneficiaries, and green-thumbed residents whose gardens were featured on the tour,

"This year's tour was a banner year, considering the inclement weather we experienced. We will be pushing for $25,000-$30,000 next year." He became enthusiastic when speaking of his personal experience transplanting trees and reconditioning the Northwest's idiosyncratic soil.

The proceeds come from ticket sales and business sponsors. In addition to ArtsWest, this year's benefactors included the Seattle Children's Playgarden, Log House Museum, Highline Botanical Garden, and Highland Park Elementary School.

Jamila Norris, a first-grade teacher at Highland Park Elementary School, was thrilled with her $2,600 gift.

"This will get our green house up and running," she said with a big smile. She says she plans to team up with colleague, Laura Drake, to teach students to transplant seed and create mosaic pots, to show the youngsters that "art and gardening go hand in hand." She will also instruct special-needs kindergarten students to build troughs to help illustrate how certain foods are grown.

Andrea Mercado, director of the Log House Museum, 6006 61st Ave. S.W., will use the gift to install interpretive signs, and additional native plants.

"Our grounds have native plants like those here at the time the Denny party landed on Alki in 1851. We have rush plants that visitors simply walk by," says Mercado. "The signs will inform them how indigenous people would have used these plants to make baskets."

ArtsWest director Harrison says that, thanks to his generous gift, the show will go on. He opens October 3 with the Seattle Premiere of the London, and Off-Broadway hit musical, Bat Boy, which features a mythological imp created by the newspaper tabloid Weekly World News. Could be quite a night of entertainment for Curt Black, and Seattle's other chiropterologists.

Steve Shay my be reached at wseditor@robinsonnews.com