Greenwood Elementary School is building a new school garden, thanks to a grant from the city’s Department of Neighborhoods. The new garden will be on the southwest corner of the building.

The first community meeting and ground breaking is this Saturday morning at the school, at 144 NW 80th St. Meet in the commons on the first floor for coffee (donated by Makeda Coffee) and general info from 9:30-10:30 a.m., then the ground breaking starts at 10:30 a.m.

You can follow the garden’s progress online. For more information, contact the project coordinators, Jessyca Pole or Stephanie Magill, at d.poole@comcast.net or stephcblum@yahoo.com.

The Seattle Public Library is looking for volunteers to help maintain the grounds at several neighborhood branches this summer and fall. Volunteers will weed, rake leaves and pick up litter.

While the Greenwood Library does not need gardeners, the Broadview Library, north of Greenwood at 12755 Greenwood Ave. N., does. So do Ballard, Fremont, and several others in other parts of the city.

Gardening at the Library is an opportunity for friends, families and company teams to volunteer together. High school students can obtain service-learning hours for graduation requirements. Student volunteers must be at least 15 years old.

The time commitment is flexible. Volunteers can sign up for gardening work parties throughout the summer and fall, or assist with a one-time project. Work parties will be scheduled between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays.

For more information, contact Anne Vedella, volunteer services coordinator, at anne.vedella@spl.org or 206-386-4614. Volunteer applications can be downloaded from www.spl.org (select Support Your Library and go to the Volunteer Opportunities page).

Annie’s Homegrown organic food company is sponsoring a nationwide contest to get kids eating their veggies, and the school with the most people pledging to eat and plant veggies could win a school garden. PhinneyWood reader Julie tells us that Greenwood Elementary School is currently in fourth place.

The Root 4 Kids contest runs through May 31.

From the contest website:

Enter the name of the school you’d like to see win the grand prize in the designated “School Name” field. While you’re at it, tell us how many kids you commit to helping dig or plant a new veggie this year (e.g. two of your own kids, a classroom of 30 kids, or a school of 800).

Note: Each unique form submitted (not number of kids entered) counts as one sign up for the designated school.

Already signed up for Root 4 Kids, but want to participate in the contest?

You can still help your school win simply by committing to help even MORE kids in your life dig or plant new veggies. Visit this link, enter your additional number and the name of the school you’d like to see win the grand prize.

We Patch is a Seattle organization that pairs up would-be gardeners with those who have gardening space. Director Peter Rothbart is a former Phinney resident. The service is free.

By facilitating local, small-scale agriculture, we aim to strengthen neighborhood communities, foster healthy lifestyles, and promote environmental stewardship.

Our website (www.wepatch.org) enables users to find either garden space or gardeners in their area. We have already helped start dozens of new gardens across Seattle.

After setting up an account, you can post to the We Patch board as someone either looking for planting space or someone with space who needs a planter. Then use the customizable search function to find a good match in your area.

The Greenwood Senior Center’s garden needs volunteers for the coming year to help bring healther and sustainable food to the center’s lunch programs.

We are looking for volunteers interested in helping out with the garden this year in a variety of capacities, especially those interested in being on a planning committee. No need to have previous garden experience, just an interest in community gardens, food justice, and bringing fresh, healthy, local produce into the senior center’s meal program.

If you’d like to volunteer, there’s a meeting at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 21 at the Senior Center, 525 N. 85th St. For more information, email or call Emily at 206-297-0875.

Join your neighbors and take a tour of some of the city’s 73 P-Patches. Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods and its P-Patch Community Gardening staff will lead six tours of five gardens each.

The two-hour Northwest tour meets at the Greenwood Neighborhood Service Center, 8515 Greenwood Ave. N., at 1 p.m. on Oct. 23. Pile into a city van and check out the following P-Patches: Good Shepherd, Fremont, Hazel Heights, Greg’s Garden, and Ballard.

Tours are free, but reservations are required because space is limited. You can register online or call (206)386-4123.

These gardens are gathering places where neighbors can strengthen networks and steward—plan, plant and maintain—a piece of open space together. Much of the produce harvested is donated to local food banks and feeding programs. In 2009 alone, gardeners contributed over 18,500 hours and donated about 12.4 tons of food.

A group of volunteers is working on creating a “sensory garden” next to the rose garden at Woodland Park Zoo, and they need your help.

What is a Sensory Garden? Come help us figure that out. We’re creating a garden to engage all the senses to be enjoyed by everyone regardless of physical limitations. We want you to come to our “pie in the sky session” and help us envision a Sensory Garden.

Thanks to volunteers from the neighborhoods, the City of Seattle’s Neighborhood Matching Fund and Lions Clubs in the Greater Seattle area…What would help you fully enjoy this space – through seeing, hearing, smelling and feeling.

The meeting is from 6:30-8:30 p.m. on Wed., Sept. 29, at the zoo’s Educational Resource Center, North 50th Street and Fremont Avenue North.

For more information, email Briar Bates.

It’s time once again for the Woodland Park Zoo’s Fall Fecal Fest, where gardeners hope to be the few lucky ones able to purchase the zoo’s prized Zoo Doo or Bedspread.

Photo by Ryan Hawk, Woodland Park Zoo.

Zoo Doo is the most exotic and highly prized compost in the Pacific Northwest, composed of exotic species feces contributed by the zoo’s non-primate herbivores. It’s perfect for vegetables and annuals. Bedspread, the zoo’s premium composted mulch, is like Zoo Doo but with higher amounts of wood chips and sawdust. It’s the perfect mulch for perennial beds and woody landscapes such as native gardens, rose beds, shrubs, tree rings or pathways.

To have a chance at the doo, send in a postcard between Sept. 1-19; just one postcard for each drawing. For Zoo Doo, mark your postcard “Zoo Doo.” For Bedspread, mark your postcard “B.S.” Entry cards will be selected randomly for as many entrants possible. The Zoo’s “Dr. Doo” will contact the lucky drawn entries only.

Send a standard postcard to:
Dr. Doo
Woodland Park Zoo
601 N. 59th St.
Seattle, WA 98103.

Include the following information:

• Name
• Day and evening phone numbers
• Preference: Zoo Doo or Bedspread
• Amount of Zoo Doo or Bedspread you’d like to purchase (anything from a garbage bag to a full-size, pick-up truck load)
• Weekday or weekend preference for pick-up

The cost for Zoo Doo and Bedspread: Pick-up truck 8×4 bed: $60; 6×4 bed: $45; 6×3 bed: $35. Limit one full truck per person. Garbage cans: $8 to $10 depending on size; bags: $4 to $6 depending on size. Two-gallon and pint-sized buckets are available anytime at the ZooStore for $14.95 and $4.95, respectively.

Pick-up dates for Zoo Doo or Bedspread are Oct. 2-16. The zoo provides the shovels and the lucky winners load their compost.

The Phinney Neighborhood Association’s annual Home & Garden Tour this Sunday features five remodeled homes and five gardens in our neighborhood. Billed as “real homes for real people,” the event is a great showcase of the possibilities for homes and yards in Phinney-Greenwood.

This year’s homes feature basement remodels, kitchen remodels, second story additions, solar panels and a bocce court. The gardens include native and exotic plantings, ponds, waterfalls, unique patios and hardscapes. Plenty of ideas and inspiration to embark on your own projects.

The tour is self-guided and you can view the homes and gardens by walking, biking or driving (keep in mind that parking may be difficult). Slip-on footwear is recommended as participants must remove their shoes before entering each house.

On last year’s tour, this backyard playhouse was a big hit.

The Home & Garden Tour is from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $12 for PNA members and $15 for the general public and are available online or at the PNA, 6532 Phinney Ave. N. Babes-in-arms are free; tickets for children ages 2-12 are $5. Online tickets must be exchanged for the Home & Garden Tour brochure at the Phinney Neighborhood Center. The ticket brochure includes a map, addresses and a brief description of each home or garden.

For brown-thumbed gardeners such as myself, this is a welcome bit of news. Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) and the Saving Water Partnership have produced “The Plant List,” a guide to help you choose the right plant for the right place in your garden.

When choosing plants, the most important consideration should be whether a site provides the conditions a specific plant needs to thrive. Soil type, drainage, sun and shade all affect a plant’s health, appearance and maintenance needs.

The Plant List highlights trees, shrubs and other plants that will thrive in different conditions, including wet soils, dry soils and drought, as well as sunny and shady sites. The Plant List also offers a comprehensive list of native plants that are suited to the northwest.

“When gardeners match the right plant to the right place in their garden, the plants will flourish naturally” said Liz Fikejs, Acting Resource Conservation Manager with SPU. “The Plant List helps gardeners find beautiful plants that will thrive in their gardens without wasting water, pesticides and fertilizers trying to grow plants in places they are not suited.”

When planting new plants, Fikejs advises gardeners to dig one to three inches of compost into new beds – which helps sandy soils hold nutrients and water, and loosens clay soils – and spread a layer of mulch, such as leaves, wood chips, compost, or grass clippings around plants on the soil surface, keeping it about an inch away from stems.

Looking for a little more happiness in your life? Cecile Andrews, local author of “Less is More” and “Slow is Beautiful,” will guide you through “Happiness Lessons” from 7-9 p.m. on Tuesday, May 18, at the Phinney Neighborhood Center, 6532 Phinney Ave. N.

In the past few years there has been a great deal of research on the nature of happiness. What are the secrets of happiness? Why is it on the decline? What specific steps can we take for our personal happiness as well as for societal well being? How can Seattle use a Gross National Happiness measurement? To register, call 206 783 2244, $5 donation.

The 85th Street Market on the corner of 8th Avenue Northwest and NW 85th Street now has an ice cream shop.

We are ready with our ice cream shop just in time for summer. We carry 24 different flavors from Dreyr’s . We will serving hand dipped ice cream by scoop, shakes, smoothies, sundae, banana split, root beer float and a lot more.

PlayMatters at 7720 Greenwood Ave. N. is having a summer-long special of $5 for open play time from now through August.

The Phinney Neighborhood Association is looking for volunteers in a number of different areas: PNA Board Members, writers for the quarterly Phinney Ridge Review, copywriters and “information architect” for the PNA’s new website, and volunteers to help run the PNA’s World Cup showings this summer. Email Alex if you’re interested in any of these volunteer opportunities.

The Seattle Times reports today that the city is removing more graffiti that has sprung up on the oft-tagged underpass mural near Woodland Park Zoo.

The Seattle Center Foundation is looking for your memories of the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair for its upcoming 50th anniversary in 2012. “The Next Fifty” celebration includes an online time capsule. You can submit an image, story, video or audio file from the fair until May 21, and you’ll automatically be entered to win a Heritage Package (annual family passes to the Pacific Science Center, Seattle Center Monorail, and the Space Needle – a $2,400 value).

PhinneyWood reader Phil Fenner was strolling at Green Lake the other day when he came across a couple tending to the lovely little garden and seating area next to the crosswalk on Aurora Avenue.

He’d always wondered about the place, so he stopped to chat with them.

On the Greenlake path along the thin strip where Aurora comes right alongside the lake, you’ll find the “Crosswalk Rockery,” a volunteer-built and maintained memorial garden. A bench and landscaping are dedicated to Tom’s Grandma. 4 lilac trees were planted there for her 4 sisters. A cobblestone path was built by High school students, which curves around to “hug” everyone like Tom’s grandma loved the place and people of the neighborhood. A plaque in the pavement by the bench gives the specifics of the memorial – but unlike many others of these memorial benches, this one is surrounded by flowers and trees. At the moment, a row of daffodils lines the rim of the retaining wall.

Built 10 years ago and maintained by them ever since, Tom & Ruth & Larry moved to Northgate but they come back and spend a day a couple times a year fixing it up. Tom says if the “roar of Aurora” annoys you, “just think of it as a waterfall in the background! Or plug-in your earphones.”