Lush landscape grows sky high

The first time Barbara Oakrock planted bulbs on the empty, black tar roof of her apartment building above Pike Place Market, she forgot about them.

Months later, when the landscape architect remembered to check on the tulips she planted in boxes salvaged from the market, they had poked their heads through.

Twenty-five years later, Oakrock still tends flowers on the rooftop. Her original notion to grow and share flowers with her neighbors has not changed, but the scale certainly has.

A lush garden, hidden several floors above the din of the Market, now occupies the rooftop of the old Leland Hotel building. Containers filled with greenery and vivid blooms wind around the deck, beckoning visitors into nooks with benches or tables overlooking sweeping views of glittering Elliott Bay, framed by the craggy Olympics and Mount Rainier. Flowers are grouped by color palette for bouquets, and a vegetable garden bursts with tomatoes, eggplant and mustard greens.

It's where tenants linger on summer evenings, drinking wine, doing the crossword or eating dinner.

Their presence on the deck motivates Oakrock, who has lived in the building 28 years, longer than any other resident there now. "There's nothing I do here just for myself," she said. "It's basically a labor of love."

A garden blooms

For more than two decades, Oakrock has cultivated the garden in her spare time, maintaining her original idea of a cutting garden while experimenting with soil, plants and design.

Oakrock and some neighbors lobbied the building's manager, the nonprofit Pike Place Market Preservation & Development Authority, to add a deck, which allowed the garden to expand. She figured out the best fertilizer and soil blend to keep the containers light. She added perennials and babied her plants until they flowered.

It also became a laboratory for her professional work, where she experimented with plant varieties to see how they handled containers and hot, western exposure and also watched to see how people responded to the garden.

For the neighbors

Various neighbors have assisted over the years, and she also has taken requests, such as one neighbor's desire for red roses. She added small trees after a male neighbor said the roof needed a masculine touch. Last year, she and neighbor Millie Baker turned one corner into a vibrant vegetable garden.

"The more I planted and things bloomed, the more people came out and the more I wanted to have for them," Oakrock said. "It sort of became an obsession."

Throughout the years, she watched how her neighbors used the space and fine-tuned her design, creating rooms separated by plants that make it comfortable for two or three groups to use the roof at once.

A long table near the entrance allows for bigger parties, but those looking for privacy can sit at a picnic table tucked in a corner behind scarlet and orange plants that echo the orange cranes below. A bench near the railing offers an unobstructed view of Puget Sound, separated from another table for two by sunny yellow flowers.

Oakrock also created a corner where she prefers to sit, the air perfumed by delicate Tamora roses and shaded by a small tree. From there, she has a long view of the garden, the water and the people.

"Nothing gives me more pleasure than to see three or four small groups up here and to see it working as a design, to see I got that right," Oakrock said.

Blooming benefit

Since its inception, the rooftop has played host to a wedding ceremony, birthday celebrations, Fourth of July parties and countless dinners.

Baker threw a friend a birthday party there a couple of years ago. It was raining, but she put up tents and lights and they still gathered outdoors.

"It was blowing, it was horrible, but we had such a great time," she said.

Baker has lived in the building almost five years and at times has thought about leaving, but the deck and the Market keep her there.

"Whenever I think I need [home] equity, I think, 'Nah, I don't need equity with a deck like this,' " she said.

Jim and Judy Evans moved into the building 18 years ago, initially subletting Oakrock's apartment before applying for their own. The retired couple like to carry up glasses of wine in the evening, sit at the picnic table and soak up the view.

Jim Evans marvels that a tenant took the initiative to create a garden in an apartment building.

"It's just an undiscovered asset," he said. "It's absolutely lovely."

An egalitarian spirit rules the deck's use, available to residents of the building's 14 apartments. It can't be reserved, per se, though if tenants want to host a party, they post a note about the date and invite everyone.

"It's changed the building and how we interact," Oakrock said. "It's created a social space we use together."

Gardener at heart

But the garden is dependent on its creator and caretaker. Oakrock has spent thousands of dollars on it, though access to supplies through her job helps with costs. Neighbors also have made donations or contributed in other ways over the years, she said. The Market supports the garden's presence, but she does not receive a break on rent.

Instead, Oakrock considers the garden a gift. It is also a reason she's still there after nearly three decades. She waters the plants every morning, occasionally still clad in her pajamas. She prefers to tend it when people aren't using it "so it feels almost like magic."

But she also heads up there in the evening to have her own moment over the water.

"That twilight moment has become a way to stand in a creation of my own," she said, "but also to stand at the edge and be totally out of the city and say good night to the sky and water."

Nicole Tsong: 206-464-2150 or ntsong@seattletimes.com