Sustainable Ballard’s 14th Annual Edible Garden Tour
This year’s Sustainable Ballard Edible Garden Tour focuses on NE Ballard and kicks off right here at Kirke Park! With its P-Patch Garden and pollinator-supporting “Secret Garden,” we think Kirke is an especially appropriate place to kick off an Edible Garden Tour.
As it happens, this summer marks the P-Patch Program’s 50th Anniversary! In celebration, Kirke Park gardeners will be around to answer questions about the P-Patch and its 50-year history, the Giving Garden program, and the Secret Garden. (Even if you’re not going on the Edible Garden Tour, you’re still welcome to tour the Kirke gardens.)
Sustainable Ballard’s Edible Garden Tour will educate and inspire current and future gardeners by showing how your neighbors raise urban fruits and vegetables. Tickets are available at sustainableballard.org for a $15 donation (Sustainable Ballard Supporting Members and children under 10 are free). Show your ticket (printed or on your phone) at the Kirke Park check-in station, then pick up your tour map and walk or bike to neighborhood gardens for this fun, self-guided tour. The event goes from 10am to 3pm.
Event Extras!
Music! Rick and Lisa Seattle Duo will entertain garden tour early birds from 10am to 11:30am on the big lawn, “Spreading Peace and Love, One Song at a Time!” On the web, visit Rick and Lisa on YouTube, Instagram, or Facebook.
Games! We’ll put out stomp rockets and sidewalk chalk for the kids.
Plants and Artwork! Kirke gardeners will have a few plants available for cash donations and (if it’s not raining) one of our gardeners will be selling garden-inspired photographs; donation proceeds will support the gardens at Kirke.
Pollinator Week! The Edible Garden Tour coincides with Pollinator Week, June 19 to 25, 2023, which is an annual celebration in support of pollinator health that was initiated and is managed by Pollinator Partnership. It is a time to raise awareness for pollinators and spread the word about what we can do to protect them.
Here are Kirke Park, we’ll celebrate Pollinator Week during the Edible Garden Tour. Pollinators are essential to edible gardening, after all! Citizen Scientists of all ages are welcome to join Gardener Becky in the Secret Garden (or should we call it the Bee-cret Garden!) to fill out a Bee-ingo Card and help determine which flowers our neighborhood pollinators like best!
Help Needed!
If you’d like to help with the Edible Garden Tour, here are two opportunities:
• Friends of Kirke Park is having a work party on Sunday, June 11 from 9am to Noon to get the park all spiffed up.
• Sustainable Ballard is looking for volunteers to help before and during the tour.
