Autumn at Danny Woo Community Garden

9/27/19 Sixth Ave. South, Chinatown/International District

The Danny Woo International District Community Garden is a favorite of USk Seattle during the transitional seasons. If the weather is on our side, we can sketch the terraced gardens and distant views of downtown Seattle, but if not, we can duck into the cozy Panama Hotel Café across the street. Yesterday we lucked out, and the chilly morning eventually yielded to sunshine in time for the throwdown.

Happy that I wore my down parka, I was still cold with the brisk wind coming up behind me from the Sound as I sketched the view looking down Sixth Avenue South from Kobe Terrace Park at the top of the garden (left). The row of bright yellow trees punctuated by the ID’s iconic red street lamps caught my eye (and as soon as I finished, I realized the perspective of those lamp posts was way off!).

9/27/19 entrance to Danny Woo Gardens

After getting some hot genmaicha from the Panama Hotel Café to warm my hands, I pulled up my hood and went back out – and immediately saw the next view I wanted to capture: It was the trellised entrance to Danny Woo Gardens framed by more yellow trees.

My self-photobombing aim was a bit off, too.

Danny Woo Gardens and Panama Hotel

4/11/14 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, Canson XL
140 lb. paper

The Friday ad hoc sketchers were meeting at the historic Panama Hotel and teahouse, but I think everyone had it in the back of their minds to sketch outdoors if we lucked out on weather. Indeed, despite a bit of a chill, the sun was out, so most of us opted to walk across the street to sketch at the Danny Woo International District Community Gardens.

Rich with trees, vegetable and flower gardens and even a chicken coop, the multi-tiered space is a tangle of crooked stairways and surprising peek-a-boo views of many downtown landmarks. After a quick sketch of a couple of garden residents clucking and scratching in their coop, I settled in to sketch a tree that had been cut down with Safeco Field behind it. Like several other sketchers, I decided this community garden is worth several return visits, especially as the weather improves.

I explored the gardens a bit more, then went back to the Panama Hotel to warm up with a cup of genmaicha and a matcha green tea shortbread cookie. Now used as a bed and breakfast and teahouse, the Panama Hotel (which figured prominently in the popular novel Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford) is full of comfy furniture and fun décor to sketch.

4/11/14 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink, Sailor pen, Zig marker

4/11/14 Diamine Chocolate Brown and Grey inks, Zig markers

Slices of Many Lives at Danny Woo Gardens

9/20/15 inks, colored pencils

9/20/15 ink, colored pencils

The Danny Woo Community Gardens in the International District offer a fascinating cross-section of urban Seattle. First there’s the interesting mix of architecture – new, boxy apartment buildings stand in the same line of sight as the stately Smith Tower. Scrappy-looking vegetation grows right next to tidy gardens and stands of trees that make you forget you are still in downtown Seattle. Gardeners weeding their P-patches look slightly askance at homeless men who, in turn, look askance at the sketchers occupying their favorite benches. And then there are the chickens (which I sketched last year, too). It’s an ideal sketch outing location for Urban Sketchers Seattle because no matter what your subject interest – architecture, trees, plants, people, fowl – you can find it there.

9/20/15 inks, watercolor

My favorite sketch of the morning is the one at the top of the page – the stone lantern (a 200-year-old gift from Seattle’s Japanese sister city, Kobe) marking tiny Kobe Terrace Park, which is your reward if you climb the gardens’ terraced hillside. A Japanese maple was just beginning to turn behind the lantern. Asleep nearby on the stone wall was a homeless man, covered in blankets.

9/20/15 brush pen, ink, watercolor