Plan For Lost Gardens Will Be Shown At Public Gathering

A plan to restore Spokane’s lost gardens will be shown to the public at a community meeting on the South Side on Tuesday.

The Corbin and Moore-Turner Heritage Garden Project is hosting the gathering at the Corbin Art Center, 507 W. Seventh, at 7 p.m.

Landscape architect Debbie Clem and other volunteers have been working with parks officials to figure out how the two pioneer gardens can be brought back to life.

“There’s a lot of interest from people who live in the immediate area, or people who are interested in historic preservation or (for whom) gardening is their passion,” said Marion Severud, community affairs supervisor for the Parks Department.

The gardens lie in ruins now. But with donations and grants, the heritage project would restore their elegance.

The project received a boost recently with the announcement of a Washington state heritage grant of $54,437.

In addition, the heritage project has enlisted 100 charter members and has three volunteer committees researching the structures and plants used in the gardens.

“We’ve got wonderful people who are very knowledgeable,” said Lynn Mandyke, director of the Corbin Art Center.

Arbors, stonework, ponds, greenhouses and plants once covered the wooded hillside below Cliff Drive just west of Stevens and Bernard streets, all within the boundaries of Pioneer Park.

They were once a social gathering place for some of the wealthiest of Spokane’s early settlers. President Theodore Roosevelt visited one of the mansions during a tour of the West in 1903.

Business entrepreneur D.C. Corbin occupied one of the mansions, which now serves as the city’s Corbin Art Center.

The other home, torn down in 1940, was built by Frank Rockwood Moore and later was owned by U.S. Sen. George Turner, a Roosevelt ally, and Turner’s wife, Bertha.

The Turners hired Oregon landscape architect Hugh Bryan to redesign and enlarge Moore’s original layout.

It included a 70-foot-long concrete trout pond with a small waterfall and a view of the city just below Cliff Drive.

The Corbin kitchen garden was oriented toward domestic use but included a basalt overlook built to look like a castle turret.

The master plan calls for restoring the Corbin garden first and then moving into the more costly and extensive restoration of the MooreTurner garden.

The ruins can still be seen by hiking the rugged hillside in Pioneer Park at Seventh and Stevens.

This sidebar appeared with story: COMING UP Meeting Tuesday

A community meeting of the Corbin and Moore-Turner Heritage Garden Project will be at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Corbin Art Center, 507 W. Seventh.