Can new apartment towers co-exist with existing urban gardens on Tacoma’s Hilltop?
For Mary Marshall, the Gallucci Learning Garden in Tacoma’s Hilltop is a sanctuary for green life in the middle of the city.
A Washington State Master Gardener who lives in Tacoma, Marshall visits the garden at 1401 S. G St. every Saturday for upkeep with about 11 other volunteers.
“It’s multiple connections with food, nature, the cycle of life,” Marshall told The News Tribune the week of March 22 while visiting the garden. “It’s really something that just feeds the soul — it’s really a peaceful place.”
From blueberries and fig trees to garlic and onions, the garden generates a large haul of food — the majority of which is divided and distributed to neighborhood organizations. This past year, the garden produced just under 1,000 pounds of produce.
Marshall and other gardeners want to maintain and even grow green space in the Hilltop area, including a children’s garden, but in a changing neighborhood, they see challenges — and opportunities — in the new developments sprouting up around them.
“How do we continue our mission but open it up to apartment dwellers? How’s the shade going to impact our garden? We just don’t know how this is going to unfold,” Marshall said.
Sprouting developments
The Gallucci Learning Garden has been around for years on Hilltop, protected in perpetuity by the Tacoma Urban Land Trust from being developed for use other than a green space.
The land trust was formed in 2001 as a 501(c)3 in order to “acquire, preserve, promote and maintain green space in the Hilltop neighborhood.” Creators of the first Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) operation in Tacoma, including Bill Bischel, Valerie Foster, Carrie Little, Chuks Okeke, T Simmons, Bruce Triggs and Mary Kay Tomko, started the trust because they felt a strong need to protect the green spaces in the area.
The trust has three gardens: Gallucci Learning Garden, Viet Huong Garden on South 18th Street and G Street, and Hilltop Orchard at South 19th Street and Yakima Avenue.
The trust operates on a shoestring budget, said Tacoma Urban Land Trust board president Janice Kampbell, but they make it work with donations, working with community partners and holding an annual plant sale.
“Gallucci Learning Garden is a cooperative gardening model, so nobody pays any money ... We grow everything communally,” Kampbell said.
In the garden’s plaza, visitors can get a near 360-degree view of Tacoma, including some of the new developments sprouting up nearby.
To the north, Kampbell pointed out construction of The Hailey, a $50 million, 186-unit mixed-use apartment building at 1210 Tacoma Ave. S.
“Once you see a crane in the air, you know something’s going on,” Kampbell said.
Several blocks to the southeast, a planned $105 million apartment complex with two six-story buildings of more than 368 units will rise from a now-empty plot of land at 15th Street and Fawcett Avenue.
The development that could have the most impact is right next to the garden: a proposed 171-unit apartment complex called The Moraine, which renderings show to be eight stories tall. Ethos Development LLC, the developer, also has a 115-unit project down the street at 1351 Fawcett Ave.
The building would block the garden’s view of the water, but Kampbell said she’s less concerned with that and more concerned about how it’ll impact plant growth.
“We’ll probably have to garden differently around here,” she said. “I anticipate we’ll probably not have sun down here till maybe 11 o’clock in the middle of the summer.”
At the same time, more people moving into the community could mean good things for the garden.
“It’s possible we could have a lot of interest in the apartments from families,” said Marshall. “And since we’re open to volunteers, how they come and what they want, is also going to be part of the equation.”
Marshall said people are welcome to stop by and learn tips for gardening not just on site but at home.
“Container gardening is another area that may have a lot of interest,” Marshall said. “... There could be people who would be interested in growing under grow lights, but you still have to know the fundamentals of soil and water.”
A hub of services
Kampbell and the other stewards are not new to adapting the garden to fit urban life.
Lately, the impacts of urban life have become more apparent — specifically when it comes to homelessness.
Gallucci Learning Garden is smack in the middle of a collection of services on the Hilltop, bracketed on the west by St. Leo’s Catholic Church and food exchange and Nativity House, which serves adults experiencing homelessness, Tacoma Catholic Worker Guadeloupe House to the south and a Tacoma needle exchange location along G Street.
The garden aims to help with food security in the neighborhood through food donations to these local organizations, Kampbell said.
Along the streets there are multiple tents where people live. Kampbell knows some of them by name and has been able to foster relationships.
In the past, some of the plots outside of the garden’s fencing were damaged by people who left trash or set up tents on top of the produce. Those plots are no longer used.
“We put in all things that you can snack on — carrots that you can pull off the ground, cherry tomatoes ... but the space was used in a way that didn’t make it safe, so those were taken apart,” Kampbell said.
Kampbell said she’s noticed homelessness in the area increasing, but so have the services for it.
“It makes sense that you’re gonna have a lot of people that have to live (here),” she said.
Bruce West, a steward of the garden for about five years, said they take precautions, like locking the fences and visiting the garden two at a time.
Many people aren’t bad, West said, they just struggle to obtain housing or jobs, for one reason or another. He said one man experiencing homelessness would come down to chat with the gardeners and help clean up or sweep the sidewalks.
“He was trying to do the best he could,” West said.
Looking ahead
There could be more preserved green spaces in Tacoma in the future, but it comes down to funding.
“With very limited coffers, it would take some significant grant writing, you know, in finding the right funding source to be able to acquire more green space,” Kampbell said.
Right now, the land trust has a memorandum of understanding with a property owner for the garden on 19th and Yakima and is looking for funding to purchase the property.
“We’ve been using it for a long time, and the owners are ready to sell,” West said.
A children’s garden at Gallucci is also in the works to offer children’s gardening classes and activities. Last year, the trust was awarded $3,000 of Tacoma Creates funds for the project, but the COVID-19 pandemic delayed it. In the meantime, Marshall created a children’s book and coloring book to bring awareness to the project.
Like many others, the garden stewards couldn’t conduct as many in-person events over the past year due to COVID-19, but they were still able to visit the garden with masks and social distancing. Last year, their annual plant sale was curbside.
The good news is that COVID-19 jump-started people’s interest in gardening. Last year’s plant sale was a success.
“We sold every single thing we grew,” Kampbell said. “We’ve never done that before.”
This year, the plant sale will take place at the Gallucci Learning Garden’s plaza, starting the last two weekends of April.
For more information about Tacoma Urban Land Trust and upcoming events, visit galluccilearninggarden.org.
