Seattle Children's PlayGarden is designed for fun of all kinds

WENDY WELCH'S description of the living fence she's designed to encircle the Seattle Children's PlayGarden was enough to make me jump in the car and go check it out. Just picture a chain-link fence interwoven with leafy deciduous vines and screened by ornamental grasses mixed with sunflowers.

There hasn't been much in the way of gardens at the PlayGarden in its first few years, although this transformed Seattle park offers plenty of outdoor activities for children, especially for those with special needs. A state-of-the-art basketball court, vegetables in raised beds, and summer camps and festivals have drawn kids and families to the old Colman Playfield in Seattle's Rain-King neighborhood.

In 2004, the PlayGarden signed a lease with the city, and a five-phase development began. Now the buildings, designed by Jeff Babienko of Tyler Engle Architects, are finished, the soil improved and the irrigation installed. The orchard, kitchen garden, butterfly garden, bio-swale and wild garden are the last steps in completing the vision of a place for kids to interact with nature, to learn, to explore and to create.

The Seattle Children's PlayGarden is the dream of Liz Bullard, a speech and language pathologist who tirelessly raised private money to create a place for children of all abilities to play outdoors safely. The first little campers signed up in July of 2006; at that time the site was mostly grass with an old field house shut up since the 1970s. The field house has been renovated to hold a big multipurpose room, office and a tower that'll be a library and kids' art gallery.

This spring brought the Garden House, topped with a living green roof of sedum and grasses. This very cool building holds restrooms, play space, indoor chicken coops and a rabbit hutch so the animals can shelter safely indoors overnight. The kitchen has glass garage doors that slide up so kids can reach right out and pick produce to pop into pans on the stove. It's designed for wheelchair accessibility and has a cooktop that stays cool to the touch. Cooking will be an important component of the PlayGarden experience for the thousand or so children expected to participate this summer. "So many kids with disabilities have nutritional challenges, food sensitivities or need practice chewing and swallowing," says Bullard. Landscape architect and therapeutic-garden expert Daniel Winterbottom was involved from the start, drawing up the master plan for the site and gardens. A couple of years ago, garden designer Wendy Welch fell in love with the idea of the PlayGarden and has come up with practical plans sure to stir the fancy of kids and adults alike.

Welch chose sturdy plants she describes as "provocative for kids," meaning they're colorful, textural, huge, tasty and/or fragrant. Big swathes of plants ensure that kids have plenty to pick, eat and play with; there's an entire hedge of 'Sunshine Blue' blueberries and dozens of spherical alliums for kids to pluck for crowns or magic wands. The idea is that the kids will use the plants for snacking and cooking, imaginative play and crafts. "I threw out my own snobby aesthetic about plants, and it was liberating," says Welch. Plans for the kitchen garden include quick-growing edibles like lettuces, radishes and herbs to keep kids interested.

What about maintaining all these ambitious gardens?

"We'll celebrate when the leaves in the butterfly garden are filled with holes," says Welch, who chose plants vigorous enough to hold up to caterpillar predation. Bullard puts it all into perspective: "This is a play garden, not a show garden."

Valerie Easton is a Seattle freelance writer and author of "The New Low-Maintenance Garden." Check out her blog at www.valeaston.com.