Community Thrives Along With a Garage-Top Garden

A set of Seattle designers, neighbors and city officials have upped the community gardening ante with the town’s first large-scale community garden on top of a 50-year-old garage. Somewhere on the market, Joni Mitchell is grinning.

Eating neighborhood and preserving green spaces are healthful trends, but linking with neighbors is what really makes community gardening unique. The project, called UpGarden, takes this experience to the rooftop, making a 30,000 square-foot showcase for the way a edible landscape — and fresh neighbor connections — can emerge out of a parking lot.

Eric Higbee | Landscape Architect

Designed and built in seven months on a $150,000 budget, the community-run roof garden was made by designer Nicole Kistler, landscape architect Eric Higbee, the community of Queen Anne/Uptown along with the P-Patch Program of Seattle.

Eric Higbee | Landscape Architect

The location. The metropolitan Uptown/lower Queen Anne neighborhood previously lacked some community gardening space. A voter-passed step in 2008 prioritized the neighborhood for a community garden.

Affordable open lots aren’t the easiest to find, so the project’s creators looked up — into a parking structure in the Seattle Center. Dealing with a structural engineer was key, says Higbee.

Eric Higbee | Landscape Architect

The community. Higbee and Kistler maintained three community design meetings within the course of a few months. The community’s continuing dedication and commitment to the project floored the designers.

These meetings generated a feeling of solid ownership of their garden and the neighborhood as a whole.

The layout. Not surprisingly, few precedents exist for parking garage community gardens. Together the community determined about everything, from the design and engineering to the way the plots were assigned and managed. Things had to be durable and economical, and needed to stay on the roof.

Drainage is a major concern in most landscape architecture jobs. This can be compounded on rooftop gardens, in which loading can also be an issue — consider soil, which can weigh over 100 lbs per square foot, on a parking structure designed to hold 40 lbs per square foot. The crowning of the garage and the slope of this space ordered the layout and application needs. Two wide paths run the length of the backyard where the roof can hold the smallest amount of weight.

Kistler claims that they turned to traditional agricultural versions that used terracing to take care of incline — rice paddies, contour construction etc.. Softly undulating terraces work across the garage.

Nicole Kistler Studio

1 hundred plots, 100 square feet each, were distributed in accordance with volunteer hours. There was A community lawn area designed in addition to a communal growing space for banks. The community suggested converting an Airstream trailer into a toolshed, and among the members found one.

Eric Higbee | Landscape Architect

The structure. The parking garage is slated for demolition as part of Seattle’s master plan, but that could be in a few years, even as little as a decade. Kistler notes due to the uncertain future of this backyard, deconstruction was a key consideration.

No structural modifications could be made into the garage. The planters and terraces are made of FSC-certified cedar boards and lined with filter fabric. Everything is securely fixed but also reusable and portable for the next UpGarden location.

Nicole Kistler Studio

This garden is primarily volunteer such as building. Besides the contractors who stress washed the roof and put posts to your terraces, the community was responsible for the remaining part of the building. A lot of triple and quadruple checking of jobs occurred, states Higbee, yet this project goes to demonstrate how simple materials, hard work and concentrated design can go a long way.

Nicole Kistler Studio

A soil company blew lightweight mulch on the roof out of four stories below.

Nicole Kistler Studio

A 50-year celebration. The Mercer Street Parking Garage and Seattle Center were built for the World’s Fair in 1962, in a time Once the space race and car culture signaled invention.

Fifty years later, we can still observe the innovation happening. This backyard, built during the Seattle Center 50 anniversary party, can be regarded as an exploration of a future for our towns.

Nicole Kistler Studio

Nicole Kistler Studio

Kistler visits the garden often to to see the way the community continues to enjoy it. Residents look out for one another and learn with each other, she says. While most had some urban gardening expertise, rooftop farming is a whole other game — from drying winds into intense sunlight and reflected warmth — and it’s one they are exploring together.

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