The East Side is getting two more crime fighters, two more exercise facilities, two more gathering places.
Compliments of the Puyallup Tribe of Indians and the City of Tacoma, it is getting two community gardens that will change the scenery and feed the people along Portland Avenue.
They’re scrub lots right now – weedy, seedy sites at the corners of East 32nd Street and Wright Street and Portland. Together, they cover about two thirds of an acre.
A defunct restaurant abuts the tribal plot at 32nd Street.
The city has posted a yellow land-use-change notification on its Wright Street parcel.
Who knew you had to go through the permitting process to get land back to the garden?
Never mind. Unless someone raises a flap, the lot will be available for planting this spring.
Mayor Marilyn Strickland has promised city support for seven community garden sites it announced this spring.
That’s more than talk. The city is hiring an expert to help set up and coordinate these sites. Fencing is a possibility, as are raised beds. Tagro, the finest homemade soil amendment anywhere, will be available for the asking.
Dan Fear, cleanup king of First Creek Neighbors, has been working with David Whited of the Puyallup Tribe to produce a design for the tribal plot.
Already, a landscape architect has laid out a possible scheme, a starting point.
Already, folks are suggesting changes. Asking questions. Joining a discussion that’s one of the healthy parts of a community garden.
What kind of fencing will invite people to be part of the growth while keeping vandals out?
Is there money for any fencing at all?
Should there be a street-side flower garden, just for the sake of beauty?
Would tribal members create a healing garden of their traditional medicinal plants?
Will there be a food bank garden?
Does anyone have farming experience? How about a plow?
Fear and Whited have been working the logistics.
The tribe, for example, will provide water for its land.
“That’s huge,” Fear said.
There’s a chance the gardens can get start-up funds from an East Side Neighborhood Council innovative grant.
Fear is recruiting gardeners, and would like to find people to coordinate the tribe’s garden.
If you’d like to play, call him at 253-304-2808 or e-mail him at firstcreek@gmail.com. For ongoing information on both plots, check out the First Creek Neighbors’ Web site at firstcreek.blogspot.com.
Girl Scouts and AmeriCorps workers will volunteer to get the tribe’s lot cleaned up and ready to plant. They’ve joined neighbors to pick up trash. This week they’re going after the rocks and bricks, and after that the blackberries.
Fear hopes both sites will be ready for planting in mid- to late May.
No need to wait, if you want to get down and dirty with some urban landscaping. On April 24 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., the whole neighborhood will be rocking with work parties.
There will be a chance to dig in at the garden.
The tribe and First Creek Neighbors will host a competitive cleanup throughout the area.
Edwina Magrum of First Creek and Lynnette Scheidt of Dome Top Neighborhood Alliance have a friendly contest to see which group can haul the most tons of junk out of the neighborhood.
That kind of activity reclaims the neighborhood and cuts crime. After First Creek mobilized, crime in the area dropped by 14.2 percent between 2008 and 2009.
“We are hoping to beat 46 tons, which is what we did last year,” Magrum said.
Dome Top will drop off at the lot at 2727 E. D Street, behind the Tacoma Dome. First Creek will meet at the Tribal Administration Building, 3009 E. Portland Ave. And, Whited said, the tribe will serve a catered lunch afterwards.
Meanwhile, Fear will gather his troops to pull junk out of the First Creek bed at East Fairbanks Street.
That’s near the spot where Tiffeny Stoaks and her children, Angela, 10, and Miguel, 7, have lived for six years. This year, for the first time in all those years, they have heard frogs croaking. They’ve heard that watershed coming to life again.
Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677
kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com
