Address: 620 South Main St, Seattle, WA 98104
Types of fruit grown within this orchard: apple, European and Asian pear, cherry, fig.
Background and history:
The Danny Woo Community Garden and Orchard is a multicultural, multigenerational gathering space. Surrounded by apartment buildings housing low-income seniors, the 1.5-acre garden is the district’s largest green space. The steeply terraced site hosts nearly 100 garden plots and more than 60 mature fruit trees. Kneeling down to weed garden plots filled with bok choy, bittermelon, daikon, and watercress, elder immigrant gardeners find a sanctuary among the crops and flowers that connect them with their countries of origin.
Community Activists – In 1975, activists led by the nonprofit InterIm Community Development Authority (CDA) negotiated with local landowner and community leader, Danny Woo, to convert some of his International District property into a community space for neighborhood residents. With facilitation from “Uncle” Bob Santos, a private-public partnership ultimately combined Danny Woo’s property and a city-owned park, Kobe Terrace, into the Danny Woo International District Community Garden. InterIm CDA assumed management of the garden. The garden, adjacent apartments and nearby businesses are uniquely tied to the history of early Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Vietnamese, Korean, and other Asian and Pacific Islander settlers. Continuing this legacy, a Children’s Garden was created in 2008 to pass on gardening knowledge from the elders who tend the garden plots to younger generations.
