How Mirrormont Pea Patch Came to Be

by Linda Shepherd

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Conception & Research: For years, I felt like a failure as a farmer. But I refused to cut down trees to grow peas. To make matters worse, the deer, rabbits and slugs ate the few wimpy veggies I managed to grow. Yet, with the downturn in the economy in 2008, it seemed ever more important to find a way to grow my own food. So, I set off with a mission to create a community garden in Mirrormont. In the fall of 2008, I submitted an article to the MCA newsletter to invite others wanted to help.

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Foodies, locavores, and gardeners joined with me in January 2009, lured by visions of growing tasty heirloom tomatoes, lush rainbow chard, and iridescent blue potatoes.

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Location: The first challenge was to find land with sun in our forested community. In order to promote community and better steward their land, the Mirrormont Country Club generously agreed to lease 6800 square feet of sunny land behind the tennis courts, adjacent to Mirrormont Park.

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Funding: The next big challenge was funding. I took a grant-writing course, and a diligent search yielded a $10,000 matching grant from King County’s Community Partnerships and Grants (CPG) Program, a public/private partnership initiative that empowers user groups to construct and maintain public recreation facilities. Mirrormont Community Association’s successful track record with Mirrormont Park made us the eligible for a small grant for the community garden. The MCA gave approval to apply for the grant at the April 2009 board meeting. Grant funding was approved in June, 2009

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Sweat: Then the hard work of “sweat equity” began. At the end of the first work party in April 2009, one volunteer almost walked away. We’d barely made a dent in the thorny tangle of blackberries. “It’s never going to happen,” she moaned. “There are too many brambles, too much to do.” As of 2024, she was still gardening with us, the only original gardener remaining besides me.

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Despite hopes of planting those juicy heirloom tomatoes in 2009, it took over a year for volunteers to clear invasive Himalayan blackberries, pull out stumps, put in a French drain, level the land, build raised beds, install a deer fence and a drip-irrigation system, construct compost bins, and build a shed.

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To meet the obligation of the matching grant, volunteers worked over 2340 hours (worth $35,100), and professionals donated 43 hours (worth $6450). In addition, local sponsors donated $9172-worth of in-kind donations. Generous neighbors donated chairs, picnic tables, and tools. All in all, volunteer efforts and donations matched over five times the amount of the grant, which demonstrates that the King County’s partnership-grant strategy effectively stretches the buying-power of taxpayer money. Mirrormont Pea Patch provides a model for citizen-led volunteer groups creating community gardens

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Success!

During the summer of 2010, 22 families harvested food from our first growing season

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It warmed my heart to see Pea Patch gardeners growing food, building community, gathering for bimonthly potlucks, and sharing our abundance with others. Gardeners donated over 180 pounds of organic vegetables to Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission in 2011. Junior Gardeners learned about planting, tending, and harvesting snow peas, strawberries, lettuce, carrots, beets, broccoli, pumpkins, and sunflowers, and made the ScaryGirls, scarecrows with skirts

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Between 2010 and 2024, 94 families gardened at Mirrormont Pea Patch. In addition to feeding our families, we donated a total of 5458 pounds of organic food to food banks, including those in Issaquah and Maple Valley.

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Besides producing food, Mirrormont Pea Patch has been wonderful for building community. Neighbors stop by on walks and admire the gardeners’ creatively designed plots and to see what’s growing. One neighbor said she was so inspired that she built four raised beds at her home. Everyone says they’ve met more people through the Pea Patch in the first year than they did in the past 2 to 30 years of living in Mirrormont. The Issaquah Press published an article on August 31, 2011, “Gardeners grow community spirit in pea patches,” which featured Mirrormont Pea Patch:​​​​