Rainier Beach Urban Farm and Wetlands

• Provide fresh and affordable produce to the Rainier Beach community.
• Expand, restore, and connect existing wetland to the shores of Lake Washington.
• Create opportunities for experiential multiage and multicultural educational programming relating to nutrition, agricultural production, and wetland ecosystems.
• Support agricultural production on site through permaculture and other experimental land management practices as determined over time by Tilth Alliance, the nonprofit organization managing the site.
• Provide stewardship and community service opportunities for the community.

• 2 zones of agricultural fields on the east and west sides of the site incorporate rotating, diverse crops determined through community meetings including sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas), purslane (Portulaca oleracea), okra (Abelmoschus esculentus), teff (Eragrostis tef), molokhia (Corchorus olitorius), papalo (Porophyllum ruderale), ashwaganda (Withania somnifera), and epazote (Dysphania ambrosioides). Plant choices reflect community and cultural preferences while maintaining sustainable farming practices.
• 2 free community “you-pick” fields provide produce for members of the public to harvest throughout the year. Rotating crops include community requests such as strawberries, onions, lettuces, and herbs.
• A restored wetland composed of native plantings including willows (Salix spp.), red flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum), and osoberry (Oemleria cerasiformis) spans a central core of the site from north to south, replacing formerly unmanaged acres of weedy ruderal plants and connecting the waterway to the shoreline of Lake Washington.
• An apiary composed of honeybees housed in 12 bee boxes and enclosed by a willow wattle fence supports pollination of agricultural and wetland plants in the area.
• Forageable plants including salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis), evergreen huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum), and salal (Gaultheria shallon) buffer the enhanced native wetland central core, allowing the public to harvest edible plants and more deeply engage with the wetland ecosystem while maintaining interior wetland functioning and health.
• Accessible trails circumnavigate the wetland and foster pedestrian circulation between the classroom, entry plaza, agricultural fields, and entrance to neighboring Beer Sheva Park.
• A paved entry plaza connects the loop driveway and central farm buildings, welcoming visitors to the site with an open gathering space supplemented by a community bulletin board, wayfinding map, and nearby farm stand.
• 4 salvaged hoop houses relocated from original site placement, a cold storage facility, a staff office, 3 wooden shade structures, and a tool shed support the functioning of the site as a working urban farm and sustainable community business.
• An open-air 3-booth farm stand situated next to the entry drive is a venue for the community to purchase affordable fresh produce and plant starts for home gardening. It is staffed by Tilth Alliance employees and volunteers on Thursday evenings between June and September.
• A multi-use classroom and commercial kitchen serves as a beacon for community gatherings, creating outdoor gathering space beneath a large awning and indoor space for educational programming, cooking, and sharing community meals.
• ADA parking spaces, accessible plaza and classroom spaces, and accessible soft surface paths throughout the farm support equitable access to programming.
• Multilingual signage and wayfinding throughout the site is clear, graphic, and accessible to support a culturally and linguistically diverse community, including signs in Spanish, French, Vietnamese, Oromo, Amharic, and Chinese.
• Colorful sculptural representations of native plants and animals found on site mark significant areas throughout the farm and wetland, connecting visitors to agriculture and wetland ecology through interpretive artistic beacons.

The landscape architects designed the farm and wetlands to be an adaptive and sustaining, culturally relevant landscape through expansive and creative permitting and flexible site design that allows Tilth Alliance farmers to adapt the site as needed according to responsive management practices. 

The site was initially zoned as conditionally agricultural within a residential zone, but the landscape architects met extensively with city planners to ensure the site was permitted for aquaculture and agricultural practices. The designers’ attention to zoning and permitting supports the community need for cultural relevance in agricultural practices; these expansive permits allow for possible future options including rice paddies and tilapia farming as community needs might shift over time. Permitting and zoning took significantly more time than standard projects, but the design team’s commitment to creating spaces that would serve the community’s needs motivated them to persist despite the time and cost of the effort. This flexibility in site program and capacity for evolving site design has resulted in the organic evolution of the space over time as Tilth Alliance managers have sustained wetland restoration efforts, community agricultural needs, and ongoing agricultural management.

Since opening, Tilth Alliance has installed new wooden pavilions for shade, community gathering space, and an additional outdoor kitchen space to increase educational programming capacity. To improve site drainage and flood bearing capacity, Tilth managers installed two bioretention ponds and used the resulting soil to construct a berm that has become a central element of a children’s teaching garden. Additional adaptations on site include composting structures, rain barrels, ongoing planting of native riparian trees and shrubs, wooden benches and trellises, and annual crop rotations in response to community needs. These adjustments are thoughtfully designed to respond to the needs of both the land and the community, and the adaptability written into zoning and permitting in the initial design allows for a natural evolution of the space.

• The collaboration between the landscape architects, community group Friends of Rainier Beach Urban Farm and Wetlands, and the site-managing nonprofit Tilth Alliance created a strong sense of community-driven design throughout the project. This collaboration ensured that the landscape reflected community needs and integrated the culture of the site into the design. For example, the management of the wetland was adapted to the Tilth Alliance volunteer program to support activities such as foraging and teaching within the wetland buffer.
• Salvaged structures and donated items were integral to the initial design and ethos of the landscape, contributing to a culture of reuse, sustainability, and thrift. However, the logistics of incorporating salvaged materials were challenging. Initial plans included a salvaged cold storage unit donated by Tilth Alliance and former Atlantic Nursery hoop houses to be relocated within the site. The salvaged cold storage unit could not ultimately be included in the design due to cost and permitting required to make it functional, but the hoop houses were successfully salvaged. The repair and permitting of the hoophouses was complex and time consuming, and quantifying the atypical processes required for public low bid documentation was difficult. Ultimately, though, the relocation of the salvaged hoophouses worked well to create a hub of activity and production on the north end of the site.
• As a publicly funded project, cost was a significant consideration throughout the process. The landscape architects were as efficient as possible with the available funds, but ultimately several elements of the initial design were eliminated due to budget constraints and the need for structural improvements to the existing office building that arose later in the design process. A more restrained initial scope of design would have saved the landscape architects time and money, but the design team and greater community were motivated to try to include as many elements of the initial design as possible within the funding limitations. Despite the cuts, the resulting design accomplished much of the intended outcome for the farm and wetlands while staying within a very small budget.
• The restored wetland provides habitat, shade, and stormwater management on site. Budget constraints limited the number of initial plantings in the wetland and habitat area and ideally would have been increased to provide more habitat and offset the carbon footprint of the project. The nonprofit managers of the site and Seattle Parks and Recreation have since planted hundreds of native plants within the restored wetland, but a larger budget would have allowed for a more robust wetland restoration when the site officially opened.

Project Team

Client: Seattle Parks and Recreation
Prime Consultant, Landscape Architects: Berger Partnership
Contractor: A1 Landscaping and Construction
Civil and Environmental Engineer: Anchor QEA
Architects: CAST Architecture
Structural Engineers: Smith Lubke Engineering
Electrical Engineering: Stantec

Role of the Landscape Architect

The landscape architect served as the prime consultant and landscape architect for development of a phased master plant through implementation. The architect assisted with master planning and site structure design and implementation. Inclusive public outreach shaped the preferred final plan for the farm with input from over 500 community members including a diversity of farmers, gardeners, and educational experts. The landscape architect led the first phase of development which included environmental permitting, advancement of the City of Seattle’s urban farming codes, and design and implementation of site infrastructure such as an entry road, parking, stormwater systems, and early phases of the wetland restoration. This phase also included construction of the farm structures and relocation of the hoop houses. Phase 2 included the installation of a cold storage unit.