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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Community Garden Growing From Vacant Lot In Hillyard

The vacant lot in Hillyard begged for a new life.

Rubble and trash huddled in piles, waiting as obstacles for bands of boys on BMX bikes. Drugs were reportedly peddled on the corner.

The half-acre lot now is being groomed to green dignity as a community garden. Rich black loam covers rocky ground, a fertile swath in a neighborhood full of apartments and concrete.

Produce is expected to first supply the neighborhood food bank, then - when would-be gardeners are found - the cupboards of Hillyard’s many poor families.

“There’s an emotional benefit to (gardening),” said Bill Steen, a neighborhood resident who is helping build the garden. “People who dig into the ground, who watch things grow, they can teach their kids a work ethic and the law of the harvest: that if you water and care, things will grow.”

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is providing the sweat and at least $5,000 in supplies. Their extravagant plans for the garden include 14 irrigated plots, a post-and-rail fence draped with grape vines, a produce-washing stand, shady fruit trees, even a berry patch. Workers will also build 18-inch-high raised beds for senior citizens.

The irrigation system is installed. Tomatoes will be planted next week.

“You can feed a lot of people with this space,” said Bill Bullough, wiping his sunburned forehead as he straddled a tractor one warm morning last week.

Bullough, a retired Federal Aviation Administration manager, is coordinating the project for the church. He modestly refused to take credit, however, and initially refused to give his name.

“We believe in helping people help themselves,” he said. His grandson, Jordan, across the lot, was working on an irrigation ditch and a sunburned neck.

The garden, on the 2000 block of East Garland, has sprung up in just a month after the land lay fallow for years. The quick turnabout has stunned Hillyard activists, who bought the land with federal Community Development money through the neighborhood steering committee.

“When I first heard about it, I imagined a little tract garden,” said Joyce Harbison, president of the neighborhood steering committee. “It’s kind of evolved into a garden of Eden.”

The garden land was intended by the neighborhood to be for senior apartments, but federal money for the project, called Winchester Court, came in short. Neighborhood leader Joyce Jones, a community garden proponent, received a call from church members looking for a community service project. The neighborhood steering committee donated $2,000 for a water system, and the garden sprouted.

Urban planners say poor areas must have such green space for revitalization, which the Hillyard steering committee is trying to spur.

“This type of (revitalization) is just wonderful for the neighborhood,” said Jean Farmer of the Northeast Community Center.

Two sprawling new low-income apartment developments bookend the garden. The neighborhood is blanketed by rental units, which provide no area for gardens.

There is a rich emotional and physical harvest from gardening, said Lori Steiner, who runs the Spokane Community Gardens program in Northwest Spokane. The volunteer organization has built almost 100 gardens in the backyards of low-income residents.

“They are trying new veggies that they would never buy in the store,” said Steiner. “There’s something about getting out into the garden that focuses you into the plants, that gets you away from the stuff you think about during the day.”

The church plans to tend the garden the first year, to show residents how to plant and care for vegetables. The harvest will go to the food bank. Next year, the lots will likely be turned over to interested, low-income gardeners. The only potential cost: the water bill, which the community center is paying the first year.

“This has been a kind of providence,” said Harbison.

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