New Kiwi Arbor at Holman Grove
Have you seen the new kiwi arbor at Holman Grove?
The arbor is the vision of the Crown Hill Community Garden, built by neighbors, and funded through a grant from a Neighborhood Economic Recovery Fund. The Crown Hill Village is proud to connect all these stakeholders to help build a neighborhood heart for Crown Hill.
The volunteers did an amazing job. Pass by the next time you are out on a walk and check it out. Better yet, mark your calendar for Sunday, March 12th and join us at Holman Grove to get a close look, share your ideas, and build a birdhouse.
This project continued the Crown Hill Community Garden’s commitment to sustainability.
“We were happy to be able to reuse lumber from a home demolition for most of our needs,” Gardener Fred said. “Instead of going to the landfill, it will be growing nourishing food for us for decades.”
Two Projects Accomplished with One Kiwi Arbor
The nature of community gardening is that the plants are a bit more vulnerable than the ones in your garden. Last summer one of the vines was trampled and it was clear that the vine needed protection.
At the same time the Crown Hill Village was thinking about ways to continue creating a community heart at Holman Grove. We wanted to have some visual (and maybe audio) separation from the busy Holman Road. Building a kiwi arbor was the perfect solution!
Kiwi in Seattle?!
These three hardy kiwi vines will grow new leaves in the spring. Throughout the warm months, each one will gain two to three feet in length, and branches will be trained to head in different directions, to cover the arbor. It will take between 5-9 years to produce any edible fruit. Eventually, the two female plants (there is also a male plant for fertilization) have the potential of producing over fifty pounds of fruit per year, each. The kiwis will eventually grow tall and wide over the years, right along Holman where we can all watch them progress.
Volunteers also spent time this weekend cleaning up the streets around the Grove. They weeded, picked up four bags of trash, and scooped leaves from the gutter. Thank you to everybody who came out to help!
Follow us on Instagram (for lots of neighborhood fun and) to find out about the next one. Or contact us and we will add you to the volunteer list!
Crown Hill Village worked with Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) to expand the Holman Grove’s permit to include the kiwi arbor. The permit process took a bit of time, but the people at SDOT worked with us to make sure all of our plans were ready for approval.
Thanks to financial support from the Seattle Office of Economic Development, through the Neighborhood Economic Recovery Fund, the Holman Grove is just getting started. The kiwi arbor is an exciting step to creating a greener, tastier, more beautiful Crown Hill.