Picardo Farm: the Original P-Patch

9/11/23 Picardo Farm P-Patch

Since I’m not a gardener, I usually don’t know about community gardens unless sketchers or other friends tell me about them. Such was the case with the Picardo Farm P-Patch, which I learned about from Natalie. Located only a little more than a mile from home somewhere between the Maple Leaf and Wedgwood neighborhoods, it’s an easy walk due east. It turns out to be Seattle’s “original and biggest garden” – the “P” from which the term P-Patch comes from.

According to the city’s P-Patch website, Picardo’s soil is “rich, black, peaty, sucking with moisture in the spring, powdery dry for digging potatoes, so full of life that crops (and alas weeds) spring out of the ground at alarming rates.” I certainly saw colorful, late-summer flowers and produce growing abundantly. Bees happily did their work nearby as I sketched sunflowers near the edge of the enormous garden.

Speaking of enormous, my poorly scaled composition could not include the full height of the giant sequoia behind the house, but that’s OK. I need to get back there to make a portrait of that beautiful tree on its own.