The Gig Harbor Demonstration Garden

It’s a humid Wednesday with clouds looming overhead, and the Gig Harbor Demonstration Garden at Sehmel Homestead Park is busy with volunteers tidying, picking produce, and answering questions.

At a picnic bench in front of the central shed, a volunteer thumbs through a reference book, looking for insights about a visitor’s gardening concerns. Another volunteer helps young visitors fill produce bags with freshly picked carrots. Some of these scenes are pictured in the photos below.

The Gig Harbor Demonstration Garden is essentially an outdoor classroom where community members can be students and learn how to enhance the beauty, health, and productivity of their own gardens.

The teachers at the garden are the volunteers. Each one has been trained and certified through the Washington State University (WSU) Extension. Volunteers’ unique mix of experiences and expertise make the demonstration garden an essential resource for the community.

Read on to learn more about how the Gig Harbor Demonstration Garden benefits the community and how Washington Rock’s gravel recently came on the scene.

The Gig Harbor Demonstration Garden is a collaboration between Peninsula Metropolitan Park District (PenMet Parks) and the WSU Extension.

The WSU Extension is a program that connects local communities to WSU’s educational resources on topics ranging from livestock to gardening. The WSU Extension where the national Master Gardener Program originated. In fact, the Master Gardener Program is an important aspect of the Gig Harbor Demonstration Garden: 25 volunteers are also certified Master Gardeners.

Work parties are held on Wednesday mornings in the spring and summer, as well as on Saturdays in the summer and for special events. The garden is open to the public during work party hours for Ask a Master Gardener clinics.

The garden contains a variety of garden bed types, including raised beds, container gardens, and hügelkultur—a type of mounded bed that uses rotting wood and other matter to create a self-composting ecosystem.

A composting station allows volunteers to process plant matter into rich organic matter perfect for feeding plants naturally.

The demonstration garden endeavors to lead by example, and that includes using a method called Integrated Pest Management (IPM), which promotes clean water and minimizes adverse environmental impacts.

Jane Ostericher is a Master Gardener and Program Leader for the garden. She shares the responsibility of running the garden with three other Master Gardeners.

“At the garden, we try to use sustainable and environmentally healthy methods for pest and disease control,” Jane said. “We only use chemical methods rarely and only when absolutely necessary and only what is recommended by University research.”

The central shed has a small library of references that the volunteers use themselves and also use as resources for helping visitors.

Jane and Elaine, another member of the garden’s leadership team, use a reference book to understand a problem in the garden.

Being certified doesn’t mean knowing everything—it means knowing how to find the answers.

“Part of the Master Gardener training involves how to go about answering gardening questions and how to find the answers,” Jane explained. “Most Master Gardeners have many years of gardening experience, which helps when interpreting the wealth and breadth of the multiple—and often conflicting—gardening information available on the Internet.”

The Art of Planning a Garden

How do you decide what to grow in a demonstration garden?

The garden strives to attract pollinators such as bees, hummingbirds, and butterflies using many varieties of perennial flowers, ornamental shrubs, and native pollinator plants.

Teams of Master Gardeners also choose plants based on their personal interests and “how those varieties fit with the garden theme,” Jane said.

Most importantly, all produce grown in the garden is donated to Gig Harbor Peninsula FISH Food Bank. Food bank staples are an important part of garden planning.

The photos above show just a few of the many plants growing in the garden, including tomatoes, raspberries, heuchera, petunias, dahlias, and succulents.

There are many other factors Master Gardeners consider: whether seed varieties make sense in the Pacific Northwest’s short growing season; which plants will work best in certain spaces like container gardens; and whether one plant will pair well with another to repel pests.

Each year the Gig Harbor Demonstration Garden tries new varieties of plants. New plants offer new challenges—such as how to keep the plant strong and pest-free—and new rewards.

The greenhouse at the demonstration garden is used to grow plants from seed in controlled conditions.

“All gardening is an experiment,” Jane explained.

Accessible Learning

A coarse, chunky gravel pathway used to be the main thoroughfare for visitors and volunteers alike. It flowed from each entrance, around the raised garden beds and composting station, and up to the main shed. Gardeners wanted to replace it with an affordable product that was easy to maintain and that could make access easier for those who relied on mobility aids like wheelchairs or walkers.

PenMet Parks Executive Assistant Emily Murphy found a Washington Rock video about pathway accessibility and reached out to Washington Rock for more information. After receiving suggestions from Washington Rock, she discussed options with the gardeners and Executive Team.

Joe Sonnen, grounds maintenance supervisor for PenMet Parks, had used Washington Rock’s ¼” Minus Trail Gravel on other projects and felt it was the perfect solution.

“I like how it packs,” Joe said. “It doesn’t migrate once it’s packed. You get a pretty smooth, even surface.”

After the gardeners and Executive Team agreed, Washington Rock provided 5/8” Minus for base construction and ¼” Minus Trail Gravel for the path’s surface. Joe’s crew set to work clearing out the old product and installing the new pathway.

Compared to the old pathway, the new pathway is firm and sturdy. It provides greater access to every kind of visitor, from those using wheelchairs or walkers to parents pushing strollers and gardeners pushing wheelbarrows.

Strollers, walkers, wheelchairs, and even wheelbarrows can easily access the gravel paths.

“We have seen our guests in wheelchairs and strollers able to navigate the garden much easier than before when the paths were mulch or loose gravel,” Jane explained. “We are getting many inquiries from homeowners as to how the paths were constructed and where to source the materials.”

Consider supporting demonstration gardens like this by contributing to The Master Gardener Foundation of Pierce County. To learn more about the Pierce County Master Gardener Program and their educational outreach, please visit the Pierce County Extension website.

Washington Rock Quarries is a family-owned business that produces rock, sand, and soil products at Kapowsin Quarry and King Creek Pit in Orting, Washington. We look for opportunities to give back to the community through our Giving Back Program.

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