Contact: Judy Alexander | 360-385-5794
The Dundee Hill Community Garden was launched in November of 2007. 2018 will be our eleventh growing season. There are currently eighteen individuals working to support our garden as they are able. Membership openings are reassessed every fall, and most years there is some turn over. When there are openings for new members, the garden is open to anyone committed to organic gardening and willing to work collaboratively to make decisions. We encourage folks living close to the garden to participate, giving them priority, but also have members that live several miles away.
We garden collectively, not P-Patch style, and seem to thrive on that model. This results in our garden having a wide variety of annuals and perennial fruits and vegetables, with our menu of crops altering a bit from year to year. Luckily, we each have different inclinations– some like to handle greens, some deal with infrastructure, some love to weed, others have a passion for managing the berry
patch . . . Generally, members take on a crop or two to manage, and a “system” that benefits us all, such as keeping fences mended, bookkeeping reconciled, seedling started, etc.
Our first summer we built a PVC and UV protected plastic hoop house and while it produced amazing amounts of basil, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, cukes, and other heat loving crops, we had some high wind events that took it down more than once. With the help of the Master Gardeners grant funding along with contributions from our membership we were able to build a new metal framed hoop house that has been much more secure. We often over winter salad greens in the hoop house, providing for fresh salads in early spring. The late winter months are filled with the prospect of spring as we start seedlings in the hoop house “simulated summer” with temps up in the 80’s and 90’s on sunny days, not only for our garden but for others as well.
In 2013 we had to replace the fence around our main garden to thwart the clever deer. Following that effort, we decided to take a rest from big infrastructure projects and focused instead on soil building and raising the growing area along the sunken south side of our garden.
In 2017, with the help of additional Master Gardener’s grant funding, we added a Tool Shed to our now expanded, 10,000 square foot “farm”.
We also have enjoyed getting some free deliveries of bark mulch and alder sawdust from Hermann Brothers in Port Angeles. Our aisles have never looked so good!
We enjoy periodic potluck meetings and work parties where we make decisions, enjoy great food and get to know one another better. All in all, we each work to our abilities, things tend to get done, and we create a lot of really tasty, healthy food. Knowing that what we do is for the collective good keeps us aware we all help each other eat better. Growing food together, collectively, is much less labor intensive than growing it alone!
And, it can also be a lot of fun!