Garden grows community, preserves local history

Dave Wheeler brings city, YMCA and volunteers to Wilkinson Farm Park’s garden

Paige Richmond

of the Gateway

At Wilkinson Farm Park, gardens seem to grow more quickly than elsewhere in Gig Harbor. It only took three weeks for one concerned citizen to turn the seeds of an idea into a community-driven and history-based project.

It was early June when Dave Wheeler, 68, proposed to city staff that he start a vegetable and flower garden at the former homestead of a pioneering Gig Harbor family. He held a brief meeting with Mayor Chuck Hunter, City Administrator Rob Karlinsey and members of the city’s public works department to explain his project.

Wheeler, a retired Peninsula High School vice principal, assumed he would have to take his request through all channels of city government: a meeting with the parks commission, a hearing with the planning commission and even a presentation of his proposal to the Gig Harbor City Council.

Instead, Karlinsey approved the request right away — a decision Wheeler thinks is “amazing.”

“(The city) has been so good to us,” he said.

Karlinsey said part of the reason an approval was given so quickly was because the garden has historic value. It’s a modern-day version of the farm that William and Maria Wilkinson cultivated when their family moved to those 20 acres nearly a century ago.

“That’s the exact spot where there was a vegetable garden for 70 years,” Karlinsey said.

Helen, one of the Wilkinsons’ daughters, had maintained the garden until last decade, when she died.

Since then, there have been a few attempts to plant a new garden — City of Gig Harbor Field Supervisor Dan Lilley recalls one year when local students made an attempt — but none panned out.

It wasn’t until Wheeler took the garden under his green thumb that the land was put to good use. He stops by the plot daily to water the garden and has even given “a few bucks” of his own for supplies. But he doesn’t take all the credit for the project; Wheeler said it’s about the volunteers and community organizations who have also been involved.

Much of the equipment and plants used were donated. The city installed a water hookup and a picnic table for the project. Green Hills Farm rototilled and composted the 50-by-70-foot plot for free, and Stroh’s Feed & Garden Supplies donated seeds.

The Tacoma-Pierce County YMCA hopes to make the Wilkinson garden part of its Friends and Servants outreach program, which is designed to give youth and juvenile offenders positive opportunities. Wheeler was involved in the program in Puyallup, where offenders worked in a garden similar to the one at Wilkinson Farm Park.

Bill Bowers, who is in charge of the program, said the YMCA is “on the verge” of making the Gig Harbor garden an official part of Friends of Servants. Two teenagers have already worked at Wilkinson.

Until that program launches, though, Wheeler is helping the community. He’s been donating the radishes, cabbage and tomatoes from the garden to the Gig Harbor FISH Food Bank.

For Wheeler and his team of volunteers, a garden is the perfect place for community service. Fife High School Agriculture teacher Dan Lofdahl, the project’s garden expert, finds that collective nature of gardening offers personal benefits.

“It gives you time to contemplate issues,” he said. “It builds relationships.”

The new community garden at Wilkinson Farm Park has grown quickly. Here’s a timeline that details when the project got off the ground:

From seed to garden

June 25: City of Gig Harbor gives Dave Wheeler the go-ahead to plan vegetables.

June 26-30: Owners of Green Hills Farm donate their time and compost to rototill the garden; tomato plants are donated by the YMCA; volunteers plant seeds donated by Stroh Feed.

July 1-25: Garden is watered and weeded.

July 26: First teenager from YMCA program works at farm.

July 28: First crop of radishes taken to Gig Harbor FISH Food Bank.

Aug. 1-26: Lettuce and tomatoes taken to FISH; YMCA brings another teenager to work at the farm.

Those interested in volunteering to work in the garden can contact Dave Wheeler at 253-857-4440.

Reach Reporter and Columnist Paige Richmond at 253-853-9243 or by e-mail at paige.richmond@gateline.com.