Address: 614 SW 120th St, Seattle, WA 98146
Stewardship Contacts: Taryn Koerker
Types of fruit grown within this orchard: raspberries, blackberries, cane berries, blueberries, goji berries, jujube trees, loganberries, gooseberries, mulberries, seaberries, elderberries, currants, honey berries, figs, chilean guavas, luma, and more!
History and background:
“The Shark Garden was founded in the spring of 2015 by volunteers and the Community Advisory Board for New Start High School. New Start is a Highline District magnet school for at risk teens. The garden was originally set up to support the program Youth Works, which gives students an entry into the work force, skills training, as well as the opportunity for credit recovery. In the summer of 2015, nearly 30 high school students began construction on the garden, using almost entirely donated materials. The small budget available went to buying enriched garden soil for the new beds. The students built a shed, compost bins, beds, and paths and then planted them with donated fruit trees, vegetables, and flowers. By the season’s end the garden had produced enough vegetables to donate over 100 pounds of food to the White Center Food Bank. With the help of tireless volunteers, donors, and summer program staff, the garden sprang to life.
Volunteers and students then added a larger storage shed, dozens of raised beds, a stage, an access road, a main gate, and P-patch plots with the help of generous donations by NAIOP and others. The orchard was expanded with over 20 additional fruit trees and we added a hummingbird garden and an area for edible flowers in 2016.
Our third season (2017) brought lots of exciting changes. We became a 501c3 nonprofit under the fiscal sponsorship of the Weed Warriors’ Nature Stewards program and we formed a board to manage the garden. We began our p-patches program and more volunteers started to support the garden. Our Volunteer of the Year, Carol, served an amazing 400 hours in the Shark Garden planting and harvesting veggies for the students and food bank. Two local Boy Scout troops helped us plant more fruit trees, mark the p-patches, and install the irrigation system, which now covers most of the site with hose bibs for the gardeners. In total, volunteers served over 5,600 hours during the year! Their tireless work helped us greatly increase the amount of produce that we donated to the community.”
Click here to read more about Shark Garden!
Photos from and MFTS event at Shark Garden!