PowellsWood Garden: An oasis in urban Federal Way | Photos
Published 2:29 pm Friday, July 17, 2015
When Monte Powell isn’t boating, collecting antique oriental rugs, celebrating 60 years with his wife Diane or spending time with his five (grown) children, he’s working at PowellsWood Garden in Federal Way.
And the 16-year-old, three-acre garden has come a long way since the Powells bought the 40-acre property in 1993.
“We believe gardens can be therapeutic,” Powell said. “I like to say get the soil right before you try to do the garden and the garden will calm your soul, not soil.”
Before they purchased the property, the Powells moved to Federal Way in 1961 as Monte Powell’s business was in Des Moines. In his early days, he was also an official naturalist for Water District 56 and knew the property as having a spring with good quality water. He recalls his children playing in the forest when they were younger.
“There were only 5,000 people here,” Powell said of Federal Way. “It looked like the suburbs.”
Powell said he got his green thumb from his mother who was a great gardener and his brother who was “equally talented.”
Trying to keep up, Powell’s efforts during his 30-year love affair with gardens have been fruitful.
Powell spent some time in England looking at gardens and training for a brief period. For 20 years, he was also a part of the Washington State University Master Gardener Program, “all of which was in preparation” for the garden.
Now an oasis in Federal Way’s urban environment, it wasn’t always that way.
When they bought the property, they discovered the ravined property had been severely neglected and used as a dumping ground. The only thing salvageable was the successional forest that remains today.
“It was really somewhat barren or bare around the house,” he said. “It just had things dumped on it so we did two or three years of soil restoration and built the garden on top of that.”
Soil improvement was key, Powell said, as when he started he “couldn’t grow weeds.”
But they eventually grew hedges to divide the outside space into seven garden “rooms” and opened their garden to the public in 1999 during the Federal Way Symphony’s Garden Tour, which they helped start.
The garden room and patio were completed in 2003 and eventually the Powells opened their garden to the greater public as a way to serve the Federal Way community.
Although Oliver the neighbor cat gets free access, the garden is open to the public from April through October from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Tuesdays through Saturdays. Entry is $5 per person and is free for children under 12 years old. Guided tours are $8.
Over the years, the garden has changed from an English theme to more of a northwestern garden.
“We try to do things that are really appropriate to the Northwest by using leaf textures, size patterns and plant and flowering,” Powell said. “… We’re constantly bringing in new material.”
The newest would have to be the golden form of Don Redwood, a plant that was thought to be extinct but was found in China in 1946.
The Powells also host several community events, with the largest being the Mother’s Day tea and the Storytelling Festival in July.
This year’s Storytelling Festival is on Friday, July 24 and Saturday, July 25.
Special storytellers include Donald Davis, Lyn Ford, Kevin Kling, Motoko and Antonio Rocha.
“Story telling is not reading out of a book,” Powell said. “It’s for adults as well as for children.”
Powell said the workshops that will teach people better storytelling skills are important because story telling can not only improve communication but help people understand complex ideas.
The event brings more than 600 people and is $20 for adults, $5 for children.
This year, Powell installed a green parking lot that essentially looks like a grass lawn with a garden around it. But it’s specially designed to hold cars with a plastic grid system that’s incorporated beneath. The grass pave locks together with sand in between and under it, creating a lawn that’s strong enough to hold fire trucks. Powell said a green parking lot is currently at Village Green, a Federal Way-based retirement home that he owns.
Along with the green parking lot is the implementation of the garden’s first rain garden, which will likely be complete by next spring.
“The water runs off the top of the house, through the pipes and into this pit which we’ll put plants and things,” he said. “Eventually, we’ll plant it up but now it’s very sparse.”
As Powell looks to the future, he sees PowellsWood as a public garden. In fact, they’ve already formed a nonprofit. And as they continue to refine and improve the garden, Powell’s ultimate goal is to be a resource for educational youth outreach.
They just finished a trial run with Mountain to Sound Greenway Program, which develops curriculums and resources for children to learn about conservation efforts. The program works with schools and coordinates six sections of learning.
“There’s quite a movement now, I think there’s a recognition, that if we’re going to have an affect on, well in dramatic terms, saving the planet, you’ve got to deal with this younger age group and get them thinking about it because a number of the problems that have been created have been through lack of knowledge or understanding,” Powell said. “So you’re trying to bring up this knowledge base of the younger generation and that’s where we’re going to solve the problems.”
PowellsWood Garden is located at 430 S. Dash Point Road in Federal Way.
Spellbinding Storytelling Festival
The fourth annual Storytelling Festival will host national storytellers who will share personal and folklore tales.
Workshops for adults, free programs for children will be available on Friday with a full day of storytelling concerts on Saturday.
Storytellers include: Mime Antonio Rocha, Motoko, Kevin Kling, Lyn Ford and Donald Davis
Schedule:
Friday, July 24
Workshops: 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Saturday, July 25
Gates open at 9 a.m.
Story telling begins 10 a.m. with the Closing Concert from 3:45 – 5 p.m.
For information on registration, ticket prices and more, visit www.powellswood.org.
