August 30th, 2010

Tacoma has its official gardener.

The city, Tacoma/Pierce County Health Department, Pierce Conservation District and Cascade Land Conservancy have hired Kristen McIvor as Tacoma’s first community garden coordinator.

In March, Tacoma Mayor Marilyn Strickland announced the position, and said the city would make seven properties available for community gardens.

In that giddy moment, McIvor was one of the few voices to say “not so fast.”

A lone person can start a garden in a day. As a veteran of Seattle’s pea patches, McIvor knew a community garden requires a measure of community consensus.

She offered to help neighbors figure things out over the next few months until the job was posted and filled.

She thought she wasn’t interested in it, and for good reason: It pays $46,000 a year, compared to the $59,000 she was earning as the environmental educator with Pierce County Solid Waste.

McIvor, who also had worked with Tacoma’s Tagro program, knows her solid waste, but this new job was seductive in the unknowns.

As she coached the people developing the four community gardens that grew out of Strickland’s announcement, McIvor fell for the project.
She admired the care and collegiality neighbors brought to an old residential lot at Yakima Avenue and South 48th Street. She was amazed by the energy people have invested in the Green Thumb Garden on Portland Avenue and Wright Street. She was charmed by the forthrightness of the people around North 45th and Orchard Streets. And she looks forward to what can be created at 57th Avenue East and Norpoint Way.

“A significant number of them were not interested in vegetables,” she said. “They were more interested in getting to know their neighbors.”
They wanted to team up on building and maintaining plots. They wanted a barbecue pit. That’s what they’re building together.

So far, McIvor said, each garden is costing about $4,000 in materials for plumbing, fencing and raised beds. They’ve all elected to use Tagro potting soil, and they’re all humming along with work parties and established plants.

Though McIvor will work mainly in Tacoma, she also is advising projects in the county, such as the team bringing the fallow Franklin Pierce School District farm back to agricultural life.

Those new gardens are easy to spot. The old ones are trickier.
But since McIvor will include them in educational programs, she and an intern with the health department are developing an inventory, including who owns the land, who pays the bills and who farms them.

They’re on city land, park land, parking strips, private land, church land, school land, trust and tribal land. They’re co-ops, guerilla take-overs, paid plots, neighborhood traditions, student projects, food-bank resources. They yield fruit, vegetables, honey, compost, neighborliness, hops, but not much grain.

If you work at one you think might not be on the list, contact McIvor.
She hopes all of these gardens together will help grow the urban component of land conservation.

While McIvor makes her list, the city is taking an inventory of the bits and pieces of land it owns that might make good community gardens.
McIvor wants to change up the way it makes that land available. In March, the land came first.

“Ideally, you start with an interested community group, not the parcel of land,” she said.

If you and your neighbors have been eyeing a city-owned parcel, give her a call. Or if you think a corner of a Metro Parks or school district property has greener possibilities, call her. This job is heavy on building collaborations between different governments and groups.
McIvor wants you to pounce on the opportunities those partnerships create.

Even if you haven’t grown anything since that bean in a paper cup in first grade, give her a call. She will be setting up educational opportunities. There will be classes on growing stuff, and cooking it. There will be demonstration gardens and design classes.

If you want to learn how to dish the real dirt, call McIvor.

Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677
kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com