For 11 years, a group of gardeners in Seattle's Rainier Valley has enjoyed a sunny spot on the corner of 46th Avenue South and South Lucile Street, growing a bounty of vigorous crops, from beets and corn to cucumbers, cilantro and fava beans.

But those salad days could be coming to an end. Most of the land that makes up the community garden, the Hillman City P-Patch, is going to be sold, and neighbors need to raise about $150,000 to have any chance of buying it.

Rather than throwing in the trowel, the gardeners — as well as brown-thumbed neighbors who love the P-Patch simply for its open space — are kicking off an ambitious fund-raising drive Saturday with a free party at the garden from 2 to 4 p.m. featuring free Southeast Asian food, music and dance.

Naturally, the gardeners also will be hanging around to offer tips on their planting techniques.

Several of the 27 gardeners who tend to the plots are immigrants from Laos, including La Menorath, who admired the P-Patch for three years before securing her own two plots this spring. She said through an interpreter that she relies on the P-Patch for food because she is poor.

"This garden is very important to me," said Menorath, who shaded her head with a red sweater as she gardened. "I can eat what I grow and I get some exercise while I do my work."

The Hillman City P-Patch, one of 70 community gardens in Seattle, is situated on a quarter-block behind the sanctuary of the Findlay Street Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), which owns two-thirds of the garden. The other third is owned by the P-Patch Trust, a nonprofit foundation supporting community gardens in Seattle.

The church purchased the land for $40,000 about 20 years ago with the idea of building a parking lot there.

"But we never could bring ourselves to do it," Pastor Joan Dennehy said. "We feel like there is enough asphalt in the world." Instead, in a good-faith gesture, it has leased the land to the city for a nominal $100 a year.

Now, though, the congregation is planning to move, seeking a new building that better meets its needs. It is selling the land to raise money for that move, but would give first dibs to the gardeners, even if their bid does not reflect the highest value for the property.

The church is made up mostly of congregants who are gay or lesbian. Few actually use the garden.

"Every faith community looks for ways in which it can give a gift to the world," Dennehy said. "We have a lot of people in our church who care about green space in cities, and who especially care about it in low-income areas. So when we see how much the garden is being used, appreciated and loved, the idea of pulling that away feels really bad to us."

For now, the church is leaning toward putting the sanctuary parcel on the market and waiting on doing the same for the P-Patch land, which would buy time for the neighbors to raise the money. The neighbors and gardeners hope to use Saturday's party to get the word out that they are looking for individual donations and grants.

If they can meet their goal of $150,000, Mayor Greg Nickels has committed the city to pitch in $140,000, with an additional $50,000 available through a community-development block grant and another $25,000 coming from the P-Patch Trust.

Dennehy said the church estimates the low-ball price for the P-Patch land at about $350,000, although the church has not given the neighbors a bottom-line figure.

"We know we can get more for it than that," Dennehy said. "We certainly think a win-win situation can happen here."

If the neighborhood purchases the garden, it would be given to the P-Patch Trust to hold in perpetuity, said Meg Richman, of Friends of the Hillman City P-Patch. At Saturday's fund-raiser, Richman said special recognition will be given to the church for basically donating the land over the past decade.

"If the church sells it to us for the low-end price, it truly will be an act of altruism," she said.

Richman lives two blocks from the garden, but doesn't tend a plot herself. She likes to visit with her young son, who plays on a swing hanging from a tall willow tree.

"It gives you serenity to be in a place like this," Richman said. "And, sometimes, gardeners will give us samples."

At the P-Patch, gardeners pay annual fees ranging from $31 to $61, depending on plot size, with low-income people eligible for fee assistance from the P-Patch Trust.

Some of the produce grown at the Hillman City P-Patch is familiar to the Lao diet, but not readily available in stores, such as Lao basil and bitter melon.

Lisa Duangprasaert, who lives two blocks from the P-Patch, shares her ample crops with relatives and elderly members of the Lao community who are too frail to garden themselves.

"I still have eight bags of tomatoes left in my freezer that I grew and preserved from last year," she said.

Richman said Hillman City P-Patch gardeners contributed 240 pounds of vegetables and fruits they grew last year to a Southeast Seattle food bank.

Brenda Matter, in her fifth year gardening at the P-Patch, has a shady spot to grow plants at her house about a mile away but prefers the sunny disposition of a community garden.

"It helps to see what other gardeners are doing to solve their problems," she said. "If we lose this P-Patch, I could move to another one near my house, but I would miss the neighbors I've met here. I especially enjoy the mix of the people here."

Stuart Eskenazi: 206-464-2293 or seskenazi@seattletimes.com