Gardeners create an oasis on Everett’s Casino Road

Published 11:44 pm Sunday, August 17, 2008

EVERETT — A lush community garden is taking root in a once-squalid corner of an often troubled Everett neighborhood.

Feet away from where bullets ricocheted in a gang shootout last summer, edible chrysanthemum blossoms, onions and bok choy are thriving in the shade of cedar trees.

The crops are being grown on city land by a small group of mostly Korean immigrants who call themselves Nong Sha Kun, or The Caretakers.

They live in nearby two- and three-story apartments that line Everett’s Casino Road.

On mornings and evenings you’ll find them weeding and tending to flowers and vegetables separated by fences made from twigs and scrap wood.

“Hello,” an elder Korean gardener said Tuesday morning, waving back to a couple walking their dog on a trail that cuts past the garden.

The woman, who knew few other words in English, had just filled her plastic watering can from a water hydrant that Everett workers installed last week.

Roger Drake, a city groundskeeper, said he’s watched the gardeners lugging in water for years.

They would fill plastic milk jugs and orange juice bottles with water from a nearby ditch or from the bathroom sinks at Walter E. Hall Park.

“It’s been a long time coming for this,” Drake said.

No one asked the city’s permission to plant the garden.

Instead, the gardeners took it upon themselves a few years ago to carve out little plots on vacant land wedged between the golf course and an indoor city reservoir.

Before the garden started, city workers would occasionally remove dumped couches, old TVs and other debris on the land.

Over the years, it had become a convenient dumping ground for the residents of apartments that are connected by a trail to the city’s property.

Residents share stories of boozing and drug dealing and unsupervised kids lighting castaway furniture on fire.

It’s mostly quiet now.

“The citizens in a way took it back,” said City Councilman Shannon Affholter, who heard about the garden while serving on the parks board last year. “They got engaged and said, ‘Something else can go here.’ “

On a quiet morning, when the loudest noises are from crows and Canada geese, it’s easy to forget the garden’s surroundings.

It is just blocks from Boeing Co.’s bustling jumbo jet assembly plant — the world’s largest building by volume.

And it is in the middle of Everett’s most densely populated neighborhood, which is frequently marred by gang violence, drug trafficking and prostitution.

W. Casino Road was the scene last year of a shooting death at an apartment complex and a brazen gang-related shootout a few hundred feet from the garden.

Earlier this year, police cited an increase in prostitution and narcotics arrests on W. Casino Road before the city created an ordinance to make it a misdemeanor for some known drug dealers, prostitutes and their customers to even visit the area.

If you scour the outskirts of the garden, you can spot some signs of trouble. Graffiti on a tree trunk, an old car battery, empty bottles of fortified wine.

The garden makes those things easy to miss.

“It makes me comfortable and happy,” said Kevin Pang, a regular visitor to the garden who said the spot reminds him of his childhood home in Korea.

Rick Needham and Marie Applebee live in the neighborhood and have made the garden a regular stop while they walk their dog, Buddy.

“This is great,” said Needham. “Nobody comes and vandalizes it, which is surprising, especially in this neighborhood. We’ve had our car stolen three times.”

Stacey Knutson, the manager of Park View Apartments, can see the garden from her balcony. She said the garden is nice to look at, and it seems to keep troublemakers away.

“It’s amazing what they’re doing there,” she said.

Wendy McClure with Everett’s office of neighborhoods arranged a meeting between the gardeners and parks officials this spring.

Because a translator from Snohomish County Refugee and Immigrant Forum was unavailable, the city’s traffic engineer, Dongho Chang, and his mother, who both speak Korean, volunteered to help.

Korean is the language spoken in the households of about 10 of the gardeners, McClure said. One household speaks Russian.

City officials told they gardeners the city would supply their garden with water and possibly truck in topsoil next season.

They asked the gardeners to report illegal dumping when they saw it happening.

McClure recently took the gardeners on a field trip to meet another set of gardeners from Everett’s Bayside Neighborhood pea-patch on the north side of town near 23rd Street and Grand Avenue.

The gardeners exchanged plants and advice.

While they don’t have a common language, they do share craving for cultivation.

“Gardening crosses all cultural boundaries,” McClure said.

Reporter David Chircop: 425-339-3429 or dchircop@heraldnet.com.