Northeast Portland's Cully neighborhood gains new community garden

It took five years of collaboration, wrangling, work and compromise, but the efforts put in by an enormous volunteer design and construction team came to fruition last week as a former overflow parking lot officially became the city's newest community garden.

Spanning five years, the $100,000

The key is to have enough clarity to move forward, but to have enough flexibility that if somebody comes along and says, 'Hey, I'm a brick mason and I'd love to help,' not to look at your plan and say, 'Gee, there's no brick in this, no thanks,' said volunteer Sean Batty, the landscape architect who drew the original garden plan.

The long-awaited garden fills a void in the parks-deficient Cully neighborhood of Northeast Portland for community residents, local gardeners and students at the neighboring Rigler Elementary School. The list of local professionals who wanted to help grew over the project's life, eventually incorporating architects, landscape architects, engineers, builders, plumbers and steamfitters, carpenters, contractors, electricians, cement workers and, yes, brick masons.

The more people you have lined up for a volunteer project, the more success you have, said Will Levenson, a neighborhood resident and the project organizer who rounded up many of the building and design pros.

Batty's master plan for the project helped focus the garden's design in its early stages. He began coming to group meetings, listening to, sketching and capturing volunteers, Rigler teachers and community garden experts' landscape ideas. The concepts grew into a laundry list that Batty and his wife, landscape architect Lauren Schmitt of Moore Iacofano Goltsman Inc., filled out with their own ideas.

From there, Batty drew a master plan for the entire school grounds that sorted out cool ideas for the future - such as a healing garden - and ideas that could be fit within the current community garden project. He generated a workable plan for the garden and also offered input on technical landscape architecture issues that would arise as the garden moved toward reality.

I just sort of organized what could be in the first phases, he said. I had confidence that I could get it to a point where they could move it forward. We gave them the bones that they could hang stuff on.

Design flexibility continued to play a role as the group looked for grants. The rain-harvesting gazebo at the garden's center was actually born as a way to snag an innovative green building grant offered by the Office of Sustainable Development.

We thought, OK, we want it to be educational, maybe we can go green, Levenson said. We want it to be a learning spot, maybe kids can learn about sustainability as well.

The addition of the gazebo brought in BOORA Architects, which organized an in-house competition among interns for the structure's design. A design by Liz Hedrick, now an intern architect at Laurence Ferar and Associates, created the design that eventually helped win the OSD grant.

I wanted it to be able to teach the kids something about the environment. And I thought that being in a garden, that water would be an important aspect, Hedrick said. It's a way to get the kids to understand the importance of water.

Hedrick's design features an inverted, metal-clad gazebo roof, a 3,000-gallon collection cistern and an old-fashioned hand pump to provide the harvested water. She did the permit-ready gazebo plans and elevation, with detail help from her fellow interns. Structural engineering assistance arrived in the form of SW Consulting Engineering, which provided all the calculations needed for permitting. The gazebo went up in one Saturday afternoon, built by a volunteer crew from Hammer and Hand Inc.

The final touch to the garden was the entrance, designed by volunteer Ben Johnson of Walker Macy and forged by local metal artist Ivan McLean.

Johnson, a landscape architect, designed the brick and metal entryway, which aims to relate the garden back to the school while also inspiring a feeling of arrival for community gardeners. The design pulled in drawings done by Rigler students, and many of the bugs, plants and animals that appear on the wave of metal across the entry are recognizable from the original sketches.

The nine-acre end product is a source of pride for the many involved.

It would measure up to any public improvement in town, said Bob Shiprack, executive director of the Oregon State Building and Construction Trades Council. It's going to last a long, long time and be very functional for the community.

Building pros lend hands

Architectural, landscape design and engineering firms weren't the only ones who helped bring the Rigler Community Garden to life. BOORA also took the original garden plan and got it permit-ready, smoothing the way for a legion of building and construction professionals to get involved. Will Levenson, a neighborhood resident, knew Bob Shiprack, executive director of the Oregon State Building and Construction Trades Council, from another committee they both sat on. OSBCTC does a lot of charitable work, Shiprack said, and when Levenson called with the concept, it piqued his interest.

Over the long effort to get the garden up and growing, Shiprack organized donations of time and materials from trades people across the building community. Jerry Moss headed up the efforts from Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 290 to install irrigation systems. The Electrical Workers 48, led by Joe Esmonde, put in the electricity that'll make it possible for teachers to hold multi- media classes in the garden. The Cement Masons Local 555, though Greg Peterson, arranged the labor to lay the concrete donated by Ross Island Sand and Gravel. Using bricks donated by Pumilite Building Products, Joe Luna at Bricklayers Local One directed the construction of the entryway. Mike Anderson at Sheet Metal Workers Local 16 oversaw installation of the gazebo roof.