Why Seattle’s Community Gardens Are Called P-Patches

Seattle’s P-Patches are ubiquitous throughout the city. In every neighborhood there’s some sort of cute handmade sign bearing a name like Unpaving Paradise, Hazel Heights, Queen Pea or Climbing Water. So, you’d be forgiven for thinking all community gardens in every city are called P-Patches. It turns out, the name is specific to Seattle history.

What does the P stand for?

“ Often people think it's like green peas,” Kenya Fredie, the Program Manager for the Department of Neighborhood’s P-Patch Program, told me. “But no, it's the Picardo family.”

The Picardos were Italian immigrants who operated a truck farm in Wedgewood. They sold produce to local markets and at their biggest point the farm covered about 30 acres, from NE 75th Street to NE 82nd Street.

During the Boeing Bust a University of Washington student and a neighbor of the Picardos named Darlyn Rundberg (later Del Boca) wanted to help feed neighbors who were struggling. She asked the Picardo’s if she could use part of the farm’s land to grow crops like beans, broccoli, corn, and cabbage. The Picardo’s said yes.

Families that came to help grow produce were offered small 8-foot by 8-foot plots around the edges of the Picardo’s land to also garden for themselves. And from that seed of kindness the basics of the P-Patch program today sprouted.

When did the city take over?

In 1973, Seattle City Council decided to buy the Picardo farm and after a 10-month trial period, the city authorized a community-gardening program. By year-end there were 10 community gardens. All ten were called P-Patches to honor the Picardo family.

The program started a movement. Seattle’s community gardens program is one of the oldest and the largest in the country. Today there are 91 P-Patches throughout the city. Of those gardens, 56 have designated giving gardens and in 2025 they donated 41,000 pounds of food to local food distribution centers and meal programs.

“The P-Patch program is really cool because we talk about diversity of plants and how that helps with an ecosystem, but so does the diversity of people,” Fredie said. “So it's a multicultural organization in which we have over 15 languages throughout the program. It's important to make sure that the P-Patches are indicative or reflective of the neighborhoods in which they're at.”

How to get involved

Wait lists to get into a p-patch run anywhere from 6 months to 5 years depending on the density of housing in each neighborhood. But there are lots of options for places to volunteer and get your hands in the dirt while you wait. Navera Ahmed, a community garden coordinator for the P-Patches had some suggestions:

“Look at local organizations and nonprofits that help you with getting access to green space. For example, Yes Farm on Yesler Terrace. Also UW Farm has a lot of opportunities for volunteering. There's a lot of places you can volunteer at that will help you with education, will help you get your hands in the dirt, and a place to get started while you're waiting.”

Another option is the Beacon Food Forest. They host monthly work parties every third Saturday from 10am-2pm. Regardless of how much experience you have with gardening, P-Patches offer a way to get to know the land and your neighbors better.

For Ahmed that’s especially meaningful. She grew up in Seattle, but because her family isn’t originally from Washington she told me, “all of that ancestral knowledge that my parents and my grandmothers have given me is not for this soil. I've had to come to terms with [having] to start from the beginning, and I think that's the case for a lot of people in Seattle. P-Patches are such a great opportunity to actually get your hands in the dirt and do the work and, and start from zero and really learn because we don't have any requirements for what you grow, only that you actively maintain it.”

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