Skagit County Community Gardens

Anacortes

Anacortes Community Garden

Contact Betty Carteret 299-8553; This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , Jonn Lunsford (Parks) 293-1953; This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Summary:  This community garden is a public garden with plots that can be rented, including five ADA plots for seniors and individuals with physical limitations.  Visit the City of Anacortes Parks & Recreation Department website or find our listings at the American Community Garden Association for more information.

Anacortes Community Gardens program is a partnership of the City of Anacortes Parks & Recreation Department and Skagit Beat the Heat, a local non-profit.  The 29th Street Community Garden is the first garden to be constructed under this program and is located behind San Juan Lanes bowling alley.  This is a public garden where residents of Fidalgo Island can apply to the city for a plot.  An annual fee is charged and participants sign a liability waiver. Five raised beds for seniors and individuals with physical limitations are provided.  Skagit Beat the Heat manages finances and administration of the garden under the guidance of an Advisory Committee.

Anacortes Kids' Garden

Contact:  Mike Stark 360-293-3904 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Summary: The Anacortes Kids’ Garden was started in 2005 by former Master Gardener Mike Stark in partnership with the Anacortes Housing Authority to provide a recreational learning garden for children living in the Site 3 housing complex in Anacortes.  About 20 young gardeners participate annually in growing and eating fresh fruits and vegetables from their own gardens.

The Anacortes Housing Authority built eleven raised bed garden boxes at the Anacortes Kids’ Garden that serve families living in the Site 3 apartment complex.  To date, about 125 kids have experienced the joys of growing fresh food and eating peas and strawberries right out of the garden.  The garden is sponsored by the Green Thumb Garden Club in Anacortes, which provides support to Kids’ Garden to help make this fun and educational gardening experience to children in Anacortes possible.  Mike Stark manages the garden and acts as a mentor to the kids’ that garden there.

Anacortes Boys & Girls Club Community Garden

2219 M Avenue, Anacortes, WA 98221
Contacts: Leana Edwards, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , Christine Fuller, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , Angela Freedberg, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Summary: The Anacortes Boys & Girls Club Community Garden is a project run by AmeriCorps Volunteers with the purpose to provide healthy and physical activities as well as nutritious vegetable snacks for the youth. The participants will learn the benefits and procedures of developing and maintaining a small vegetable garden.

This garden was developed in March 2011. The garden consists of three raised beds with vegetables including carrots, radishes, swiss chard, pak choi, etc. There is also a variety of tomato plants growing in two gallon pots. The development of this garden was a community effort and local organizations provided donations to support the foundation of this project. These donors include Home Depot in Burlington who donated lumber, Skagit Soils who donated composting soil, and the Anacortes High School woodshop who built one of the raised beds. Leana Edwards is the current manager of the project, and come mid July, Christine Fuller will take over the managerial position.

Concrete

Angele Cupples Community Garden

Concrete, WA (directions below)
Contacts:  Jason Miller, 360.853.8213, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , Marla Reed, 360.391.2589, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Summary:  Concrete's first community garden was dedicated in 2010 and is located at the intersection of Superior Ave. N. and Main Street in Concrete, north of the concrete silos at SR 20. In 2011 it will include 22 raised beds measuring 4x8, 4x10, and 4x12--all for rent.

Angele Cupples Community garden will also include eight 4x12 beds in which to grow food for the local food bank, an area to grow field crops and berries, and a series of 4-ft.-square beds in which to teach square-foot gardening to children.  The garden will install a donated gazebo, a garden/utility shed, a memory garden for citizens who have lost children to untimely death, and an entry sign. Planned future projects include a public restroom, a multipurpose building for educational purposes, an accessible garden including rental beds, additional rental beds, and three greenhouses. Annual fees are charged for all rental beds in the garden, which is funded by Imagine Concrete Foundation and jointly managed by two members of the Imagine Concrete garden task force.

Mount Vernon

Azusa Farm & Gardens Community Garden

14904 State Route 20, Mount Vernon (at intersection of SR 20 and SR 536)
Contact Everett Chu, 424-1580; This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Summary:  This community garden is a small part of the farm's seasonal u-pick garden devoted to fresh produce and berries.  A number of the raised beds are available to community groups and school programs.  Harvest from the main garden is shared with local food banks.

Azusa Farm & Gardens is a lovely farm stand offering a wide variety of high-quality landscaping and garden plants and supplies.  They also offer fresh, local eggs for sale.  They have added newly constructed raised bed garden plots opening in 2011 that will be available on a south-facing slope in a 70'x200' area behind the farm stand.  The garden consists of more than 30 cedar-bench-style raised beds of 6'x12' each, using a natural, no-till method and will be accessible to individuals with physical limitations.  Hoop houses are also in the plan to extend the season.  Most of the plots will be farmed by Azusa to raise u-pick produce that will be available to the public for purchase.  A few of the plots will be set aside for use by community groups and school programs to raise their own crops and for supporting local food banks.  At this time, there is no plan to provide plots for rental by the general public – but come and pick your own fresh vegetables from the u-pick garden.

Bethany Covenant Church Community Garden

1318 S. 18th St., Mt. Vernon, WA 98274
Contact Andy Anderson 391-0713 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Summary:  This garden offers shared gardening in a community plot, no individual plots.  Gardeners share harvest with the homebound and local food banks.

People interested in joining should arrive at 10 AM on Mondays. Follow “fair weather” policy. This garden provides group gardening in a shared garden and does not offer individual plots. A portion of the harvest goes to gardeners and the homebound. This garden ties into an after-school-program and a youth program based at the church.  The students do the harvesting and on Mondays young gardeners donate produce to Helping Hands food bank and on Thursdays to Heartprints Food Pantry.

Garden Gate Group (G3) Hillcrest Christian Fellowship

1830 S. 13th St., Mount Vernon WA 98274
contact: Larry Ashby 360-708-7926 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ; Church Office 360-424-3006
Download Garden Gate Brochure (pdf)

Summary: Neighborhood, raised bed garden designed to learn and share the lessons ascertained by gardening in the Mount Vernon Hill micro climate. 9 raised vegetable beds, 7 dwarf apple trees.
Adding in 2011: 2 more raised beds, herb garden, and berry section.

Church members, community members, church neighbors can participate. All space is managed by the entire group. All are welcome. No individual plots.  Garden meetings are held on the third Thursday of each month at 7pm at the garden site on 14th St. behind the church or in the church fellowship hall.  Workshops on gardening are offered at the church.

Garden of Hope

Contact: Erin or Ethan McGill, La Conner Sunrise Food Bank This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ; PO Box 922 La Conner, WA 98257. Director Gil Gillmor, 420-0558

Two parcels of land supply area food banks in La Conner, Mt. Vernon and Burlington with fresh produce. La Conner Sunrise Food Bank President, Arin Magill, and her husband Ethan are leasing for free two acres located near the corner of Highway 20 and Avon Allen Road. An anonymous donor has leased another three acres on Best Road for free. A local farmer tilled both parcels out of courtesy to the food bank project.The Osborne Seed Company of Mount Vernon made a generous donation of seed including carrot, beet, bush beans and squash and the crops are already beginning to push through the ground. Many other growers, including Jean’s Plant Farm, Azusa Farm and Garden, and Faithland Growers have given donations of plant starts, and a grower on Orcas Island provided a special order of organic tomatoes for our garden.

The Garden of Hope is a partnership of a group of food banks in La Conner, Mt. Vernon and Burlington. Volunteers from La Conner Sunrise, together with volunteers from Neighbors In Need, Heart Prints of Mount Vernon and the Tri-Parish of Burlington, planted the gardens and will care for them. Bringing people together in the garden project allows the cultivation of both food and community. We invite all who are interested in helping to feeding those in need and make new acquaintances to join us in the gardens.

Kulshan Creek Community Garden

Contact Community Resource Officer Jon Gerondale, 336-0630, extension 1435; This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

The Kulshan Community Garden is located in the 2200 block of Kulshan Avenue and has been a part of the Kulshan neighborhood since 2003.  There are approximately 30 plots for families of various sizes, but each plot is specific to a person/family.  Use of the garden is free and spaces are designated on a first-come, first-serve basis.  The garden is approximately 15,000 square feet in size and use of the land was donated by Dr. Laughlin and the Kulshan Dental Clinic who owns the site.

Mount Vernon Church of the Nazarene

2710 Fir St., Mount Vernon; 428-7974; This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Contact Reverend Bethany Hull Somers

The garden couldn’t be planted in 2010 because the ground stayed too wet and soggy into the planting season. They are working on the garden area and plan to make 10 to 12 plots. About seven will be available to the community at-large. A water charge will be levied and church volunteers will handle the watering. Anyone interested should call or email the church.

Unity Garden

Contact: Sarah Detzer (360) 424 3073 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
On Continental Place just north of Skagit County Public Works, just south of Hoag Rd.
Download Unity Garden brochure (pdf)

Summary: Unity Garden is designed for low-income farm families. However, help is needed from three to five volunteers and they will share a garden for their own use. Unity Garden is located on Continental Place, opposite the farm worker housing built by the Catholic Church. Unfortunately we don't have enough space to open our garden up to the greater community. However, we are a place people can learn from, volunteer, and donate to if they are interested!

Details: Unity Garden is a 1/2 acre vegetable garden for residents of La Casa de San Jose, Villa Santa Maria, Padre Miguel, and Santa Rosa Apartments. It was started in 2009 by volunteers and donations, and each year produces thousands of pounds of food. The after school youth program that runs all year long at the apartments expands in the summer so the youth can tend to their plot, and engage in an environmentally-based curriculum. Children are taught and encouraged to grow their own food, prepare the food, and share it with their families and friends.

Viva Farms

Contact: Don McMoran, WSU Skagit County Cooperative Extension 360-428-4270 ext. 225; This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ,  Sarita Schaffer, Viva Farms Director; 206-914-7948; This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ,

Summary: Viva Farms is a joint venture of WSU Extension & GrowFood.org, an international non-profit dedicated to recruiting, training and capitalizing the next generation of sustainable farmers. In addition they offer the Local Choice CSA Food Box program delivering fresh produce from local Viva Farms gardens.

The Viva Farms Incubator Program was launched in June 2009 to provide new farmers affordable access to education, bilingual (English/Spanish) training and technical assistance; capital and credit; land and markets in order to foster a local, sustainable food system in Skagit County. The Port of Skagit has leased Viva Farms 33 acres for an incubator farm (see map link above) where course graduates may sublease plots on which to launch and grow their farm businesses. Access to shared infrastructure, equipment and low-interest “educational loans” minimizes participants’ start-up costs, while agricultural and entrepreneurial support from peers, WSU Extension personnel and Viva Farms staff increases the likelihood of early-stage success. Core areas of support include organic production practices, marketing, sales, distribution, record keeping and liability management. For farmer’s ready to graduate to owning their own farm, the program provides a loan fund with the goal of providing affordable start-up and growth capital to new farmers.

Samish Island

Samish Island Acres - Community Garden

Two-acre site on Samish island near Bow WA in the Skagit Valley.14 raised beds Meetings are the 1st Monday a month at 6:30pm at the social hall 11057 Scott Road on Samish Island at Community of Christ Church grounds.

Contacts Glen Fishel 360-757-4559, email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or Cheryl Willis, email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

PO Box 334, Bow, WA 98232-9334

The garden is located adjacent 11584 Blue Heron Road. Established in year 2012

Sedro Wooley

Sedro-Woolley Senior Center Victory Garden

715 Pacific Street; Sedro-Woolley, WA 98284; Phone – 360-855-1531, Contact– Ellen Palmer

Summary: The Victory Garden offers an opportunity for seniors and others to volunteer their time by helping the senior center produce fresh flowers, spices, herbs, and produce.  The finished product will be used by the Senior Center; offered at the Farmer’s Market in benefit of the senior center; and given to the senior center volunteers and participants.

The Victory Garden was designed and built by the Leadership Skagit Group, Skagit 7 in partnership with the Skagit Council on Aging, in May 2011. All labor and materials were donated to build this project. The garden consists of 4 raised beds, perfect for seniors or wheelchair-bound volunteers.  Volunteers are currently needed - Please contact the Senior Center for times.