GreenWorks Helps Reimagine Portland City Hall's Community Garden
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The GreenWorks team has recently completed a preliminary re-design of Portland’s “Better Together Garden” at City Hall. GreenWorks Landscape Designer Vivian Schoung explained, “The next evolution of the garden is to make it more welcoming to people of all abilities and to increase its visibility.”
The garden occupies important space in our city. It’s located in the east courtyard of City Hall and the City of Portland sees this garden as an opportunity to set an example. “We want all community members to find the garden a beautiful, welcoming, and accessible space. The proposed design elements prioritize creating a welcoming experience and better serving visitors with physical limitations and disabilities,” Nikoyia Phillips, equity and engagement manager at the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability explained.
Preliminary Overhead map of the redesign of the better together garden
“The Better Together Garden was created 10 years ago by a group of volunteers serving on the Multnomah County Food Policy Council. [It’s] a place that the community should be able to engage and learn with city government in a fresh new way. As we move through to the other side of the pandemic, outdoor community spaces will be even more valuable,” Phillips added.
The next step in improving the garden, which GreenWorks was tasked to address in this project from the City, is installing walking paths that are friendlier to people of all abilities. New surfacing on the pathways will allow water to soak into the ground, but it will also mean the garden will become more ADA accessible, with 4-foot-wide paths. It will also include raised plant beds of varying heights so people can more comfortably work in the garden.
The shared space is meant to demonstrate the City’s values. “In The Portland African American Leadership Forum's: People's Plan, community members specifically called out the expansion of community gardens stating, ‘Urban farming and community gardening initiatives are a means of connecting Black people to healthy food and its origins,” Phillips explained. “These urban agricultural opportunities also provide the skills training, internship and job opportunities, and community empowerment needed to combat negative effects of displacement.’”
“The council believed that it was important for government partners to lead by example in demonstrating the positive environmental and community impacts of urban gardening. They advocated for the small lawn outside of Portland City Hall to be repurposed as a learning and demonstration community garden for the central city,” Phillips continued. “Today, the garden partners with Outside In, an organization serving youth experiencing houselessness, to donate a wide variety of produce and herbs for use in their kitchens. This past year our Garden Manager grew and donated $2,000 in produce. We also work with Outside In to provide paid garden training opportunities to youth.”
In spite of its prominent location and its brief cameo in Portlandia (season 1, episode 4), the garden can be surprisingly difficult to find if you aren’t looking for it. “Oftentimes people don’t see the garden because it’s raised above the surrounding sidewalk and behind the low wall that surrounds the courtyard,” GreenWorks designer Schoung said. Future iterations of the garden’s design will seek to address this issue.
“The opportunity to give back to the community through our pro-bono services at The Better Together garden was a special opportunity for Greenworks,” GreenWorks Associate Principal Jason King said. “While a small space, the impact is immense as an example of how community landscapes can address food insecurity through thoughtful design while being accessible to all. This reflects our firm’s aspirations for design to contribute to the overall livability of the Portland metropolitan area.”
The Better Together Garden is still in its conceptual design phase. There is no timeline yet for its construction.