The garden in October 2023 — from the CHS Facebook Group
The garden in June, 2020
A Seattle Parks project to restore grass to the amphitheater bowl on the south end of Cal Anderson Park will bring an end to a community garden shaped during Seattle’s Black Lives Matter protests. The Black Lives Memorial Garden has been one of the few enduring monuments to the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest of the summer of 2020.
A Seattle Parks official confirmed the department will begin the turf restoration project planned for this week but declined to provide more information citing the Indigenous Peoples’ Day holiday at Seattle City Hall.
A letter reportedly posted by the Black Star Farmers group that has grown around the garden is calling for the city to back off its plans, saying city officials reached out to “request that we relocate the garden to Rainier Community Center in South Seattle.” The letter calls on supporters to gather at the garden for organizing meetings and “occupy the space.”
“Of course, showing up to the garden in the upcoming week and continuing to care for and occupy the space is always an option to show directly that we reject their plans to remove the garden,” it reads. “Now is the time to show up and get organized.”
June, 2020
The letter is also calling on outgoing District 3 representative Kshama Sawant to intervene in the parks department plan. Sawant’s office hasn’t yet responded to the call.
The Black Star Farmers collective and the garden grew together as the 2020 protest camps formed around the park with community garden plots established by urban farmer Marcus Henderson out of the so-called “social distancing” circles mowed into Cal Anderson’s “sun bowl,” a frequently muddy but well-used area of the park near the space’s restrooms and “shelter house.” In the summer, the area was occasionally used for movie nights or small concerts.
In mid-June that summer, CHS found the garden in full bloom with new plantings, irrigation setups, and even greenhouses as the streets around what would eventually be known as CHOP hosted demonstrations and art.
As CHOP grew into days and nights of clashes between police and protesters before its July 1st forceful clearance by law enforcement, the garden remained in place. As the park was reopened to the public days later, activists hoped for some elements of the camps to remain in place. Then Mayor Jenny Durkan promised Seattle Parks would consider maintaining community gardens in Cal Anderson. But officials said neighbors and local businesses will need to step up to do the watering. The city held meetings to discuss these hopes and more but little has come out of the process.
Along the way, volunteers took up the care and watering of the plants as much as possible. 
As for memorials to the protests and CHOP, Pine’s huge Black Lives Matter mural is now a permanent part of the street. But the memorial garden, for now, is planned for removal.
Since 2020, community groups have helped steward Cal Anderson have moved forward with plans to create new additions to park including the AIDS Memorial Pathway that winds its way through, connecting to Capitol Hill Station. The city has also been puzzling how to preserve the park’s maple trees and keep them from destroying sidewalks. This summer, the park’s playground was upgraded with a much-needed overhaul. And, yes, the fountain was broken again this summer for weeks.
The park also faces larger issues. Last month, the city said the north end of Cal Anderson continues to be “repopulated” despite repeated encampment clearances. And the Cal Anderson Park Alliance has called on the city to improve safety around the park, especially along Nagle where the group said violence around the area’s “drug market” was behind the death of two brothers gunned down on the street earlier this year.
CAPA, with representatives from area developers and residents, tells CHS it “hasn’t taken a position on the garden except to ask the city for clarity, as it’s been in limbo for years and we receive questions from community members about the future of the sun bowl.”
With the parks department preparing to remove the garden and plant grass seed, any answers about the future of the bowl seem to now be clear.
UPDATE 10/10/2023 4:45 PM: Seattle Parks has issued a statement on the decision, saying that the Black Star Farmers group has not accepted “alternative locations” in Cal Anderson and at other parks facilities including the Rainier Community Center to move the garden and that the department gave the group two weeks notice about the planned turf project.
Parks said the garden space is needed “to host gatherings and large events” as part of its “intentional design as a natural amphitheater and proximity to electrical and water hook-ups.”
The full statement is below.
After several years of respectful recognition of the garden at its present location, Seattle Parks and Recreation’s plans to remove the Cal Anderson BLM Garden to support larger community uses at Cal Anderson Park.
The “Sun Bowl” remains one of few spaces that is appropriate to host gatherings and large events at Cal Anderson Park because of its intentional design as a natural amphitheater and proximity to electrical and water hook-ups. Additionally, community engagement SPR conducted in the wake of the CHOP protests yielded the community desire to relocate the garden to another location within the park.
Since 2020, SPR has been in regular communication with Black Star Farmers offering alternative locations for the garden to continue its existence within Cal Anderson Park and/or in another park within the Seattle Park system, including the space behind Rainier Community Center.SPR’s offers to relocate the garden have not been accepted.
Therefore, after several non-responsive offers to relocate the garden, SPR formally contacted Black Star Farmers directly, on October 5th to give notice that the garden will be removed. This allows at least two weeks for the garden to be collected while also communicating SPR’s plans to reseed the area for turf restoration in conformance with the seasonal timelines for turf regeneration.
Please know SPR respects the intent and the symbolic meaning of the BLM garden and that should Black Star Farmers be interested in creating a garden within the Seattle Park system, we are supportive and willing to help them in finding an appropriate location.
The garden later in the summer of 2020
UPDATE: Black Star Farmers have called for a rally at the garden site Thursday night:
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So, the city has taken to redlining gardens now. That should calm things down. /s
Relocate the garden to south Seattle??? That’s extremely racist. “Let’s move the garden where some black folks live. Any objections? No! No! Motion approved!”
“Up next, that pesky vine maple on Belmont! And I guess that blm mural too.”
Citizen b: “Yeah that things so in the way. I can’t make it up to Trader Joe’s in time to get my ube ice cream fix.
Me: “Social Justice is not an eye sore!”
So disappointing. I’ve lived nearby for ten years, I’ve seen what that space was like before and after the garden, and it’s clearly so much better with the garden there.
The community stewards take such good care of it. I watch people and dogs happily stroll around it all the time. It’s fostering healthy wildlife. It’s not causing any harm or negative impact that I can see.
And what’s supposedly better about flattening a garden with an empty grass monoculture field? What is a “sun bowl” even supposed to be? Who is that for? The only time anyone used this area before the garden was for movie-in-the-park nights, just a couple times a year, and since then those screenings have worked fine in the dog area.
I can’t imagine why Parks thinks this needs to happen, or why anyone who uses the park wants this area to go back to the nothing that it was before.
It’s Bruce “Extremely Racist” Harrell’s call I’m sure of it.
You do realize Mayor Harrell is mixed race, Black and Japanese, right? Are you saying he is racist against people of color even though he is a person of color?
I suspect that they were being sarcastic. I know it’s hard to know for sure sometimes.
My absolute favorite thing about Bruce Harrell is the way he constantly leverages his “hardscrabble upbringing” in the Central District.
He’s worse than Jenny “Totally Not A Carpetbagger” Durkan policy-wise.
Oh, and here’s the hitch: despite Harrell’s “hardscrabble upbringing” in the Central District — did I mention his hardscrabble upbringing? — he’s been a King County and City of Seattle insider for **decades**.
Not that he may have had a hardscrabble upbringing, but that was decades ago, and this mayor — who is far too conservative in his policies, and far too cozy with SPD — has been a political insider, walking the halls of power in one of the largest, wealthiest major metros in America, approximately forever.
Self hating is a thing. Not wanting to be black is a thing, hell there are gay people who do not want to be gay. Am I saying that he is specifically. No! I don’t know the man, but I do know one thing he is not black presenting and that creates a different experience when dealing with people who make an active effort to not do business with black presenting people (by black I mean descendants of United States chattel slavery). And there is no telling how is father felt about being black or if he is descendent or even acknowledges it. In short, it’s not normal for black folks to be self hating, but it is normal for black folks whom are mixed to claim being mixed or being the none black race over black. Why? It might have something to do with the access to prosperity. If we, black people, happen to be lgbtqia+ and present other than black it’s a big boon to our social experience. But over all not presenting black deflects the racism that we face from the general population.
You are joking right…. take good care of it? Every time I’ve been there it’s been a rotting pile of weeds and cardboard.
Seriously! Good riddance! I strongly object to any group hijacking a public park for their own needs. This garden wasn’t sanctioned and is an eye sore right in the heart of the park which was previously used for mant concerts, movies, gatherings, and festivals.
Sounds like you need to educate yourself on plants if you think that it’s full of ‘weeds.’
This is a common complaint about gardens, especially ones filled with native plants and medicine. God forbid we have public places that aren’t filled with colonizer lawns!
“Colonizer lawns”
Thanks for the morning laugh
I’m likely far more educated about plants than you are….
I walked through today. I’ll give you that it was in much better condition than it was the last time I was there, when it appeared to be entirely neglected and was largely weeds and garbage, but I still wouldn’t call it particularly well tended.
That is observably not true. It’s a garden with regularly-tended living plants, plus some well-maintained & healthy mulch.
Nah.. it’s much better than the last time I was there- most of the trash is gone, but I still wouldn’t call it at all well maintained.
We will be fighting to KEEP this in Cal Anderson!!!
Why? To preserve the memories of violence and crimes, happening in the park and around? If BLM for you, go to schools, volunteer there, so that young ones started to see a value in education to succeed in life. That’s just a good start.
Get a big jug of Roundup.
It will be great to have the sun bowl back. With the central field essentially turned into a dog park, there are few places to relax in the sun, have a picnic, hold community events and play frisbee. The CHOP garden has always been performance art at best rather than a true garden. It should have been removed three years ago along with the 200,000 pounds of garbage left by the drug and anarchist encampment that was used as a base to terrorize the neighborhood.
This is a garbage take, there have been large organized and organic events happening all over the park this summer. There is plenty of turf space all around the park and adjacent to this garden for picnics and playing frisbee, I see it all the time.
The memorial garden is a small area that has brought some much needed plant diversity into the park, providing great pollinator habitat, and helping to soak up the winter rains that turn this area into a mess! There are regularly people enjoying the garden, not to mention the community members that come out and pitch in at the work parties. Meanwhile you mention the dog owners occupying portions of the upper lawn, creating hazards from offleash dogs and holes from all the digging. Why isn’t the solution to address the offleash dog problem that has existed since long before this garden started?
Bullshit. There’s an entire rest of the park to enjoy. Its not like the park is ever packed enough that there isn’t a place to sit. And why wouldn’t you like to sit next to the garden?
Bizarre take — there’s plenty of space in and around the garden to relax and have a picnic. There’s plenty of space for community events, too — they’ve been continuing to happen in that spot with no problem. Community events are also continuing with no issue up around the dog area and the hill at the north end. The garden’s not getting in anyone’s way.
There’s nothing special about whatever the “sun bowl” was supposed to be.
Many of us are not in agreement about what you refer to as a “garden”. There was and is something very special about the Sun Bowl, which was arrogantly taken over by a group that is now ‘claiming their turf’ smack dab in the middle of a Seattle public park. Don’t be surprised if the community is upset about it. The degraded, dug-up area you refer to as a garden has been filled with huge obnoxious obstacles that are surrounded by litter and covered in vandalism. The Sun Bowl never presented such an eye-sore, nor do any of the many beautiful community gardens that populate the area and have been such an important tradition in this City. It would be great if the BS Farmers group, who are arrogantly occupying public space could bring a better more inviting message to the community they pretend to serve, and learn from the City’s legacy of community efforts and the opportunities they’ve been offered. Instead it seems through their self serving entitlements that they are distancing people from their very own message.
The way the garden was set up leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Somebody with no history in this neighborhood decided a BLM garden was going to be there. The community did not get any say- the decision was made by a few activists with no history in the neighborhood. The guy who runs it constantly uses the garden for black nationalist ideology. Considering that right after the massacre in Israel he kept posting on the garden Instagram account in support of the murderers it doesn’t really seem like keeping with the parks ideology of being a welcoming place for all to allow somebody with that kind of hate to have a chunk of public land for promoting his worldview.
Ludicrous accusation — posting in support of murders? An absolutely unbelievable thing to claim.
One of a dozen voicing support for the massacres
This is good news! This area of the park should be restored to its intended use. I miss the amphitheater space. While there wasn’t much harm in creating the garden beside the taking of public space, it’s pretty brainless to allow for “whatever goes” as long as the person is motivated by a good cause.
The garden is inconsistently maintained and mostly naturalized at this point. It’s sprawling and messy. The soil isn’t great and the cardboard boxes are an eyesore. The above photos are from years ago.
The idea that this tiny garden is delivering anything like “Social Justice” is completely laughable on its face. For example, gun violence has increased every year since this garden was installed. Let’s focus on what’s important: outcomes not performance.
100% agree.
Nah john john. You are the brainless opressor.
Oppression is when a public park is retained by the public.
What a joke. Throwing around simplistic labels like the world is an instagram infographic doesn’t work anymore.
It would be helpful if the photos here had captions regarding when they were taken. I haven’t seen it in several weeks, but that “garden” is now overgrown and somewhat unkempt. Putting up photos only of it when it was first planted along with one very-close-up of the city’s removal notice doesn’t give everyone a clear picture of how the space has evolved…
It’s not the worst idea to put a P-Patch type garden in Cal Anderson, since the nearby ones are oversubscribed. But there’s a process for that…
The point about the photos is well taken. The first thing I noticed was that the photos with captions all stated they were taken in 2020, when the garden was being fully and actively supported. This summer it looked mostly, as you said, naturalized.
Well this is the issue. The Cal Anderson garden should’ve been folded into the citywide p-patch program as soon as they decided to make it permanent.
And, yes, it is unkempt and looks like crap.
Either formalize it as a p-patch or remove it, I say.
It’s the fall, plant die back and leaving them dead providers insect habitat. What you think of as visual clutter serves a purpose that is needed in the neighborhood. The garden is not overgrown or unkempt, come to the work parties if you’d like to actually learn.
Have you ever tried to start a new P-Patch? The city’s made the process virtually impossible. Sure, there’s a process — a process designed to prevent it from happening. Of course there’s guerrilla gardens when THIS is what the city expects people to go through:
Yeah, I so wish we had a better administration.
Seattle is so odd, because there’s a solid mass of people who want change, but we continually elect these awful mayors and city council members.
I mean, Alex Pederson is awful, and basically advocates for car-centric, anti-public transit policies whenever possible.
Harrell is a joke, is far too conservative in his policies and much too cozy with SPD (which itself is a cesspool and needs an across-the-board 50% budget reduction).
Carpetbagger Durkan — why do these federal attorneys always think they can go from the federal courthouse to the mayor’s office as some sort of divine right? — was absolutely terrible.
Was it Murray who was the sexual abuser before Durkan?
I mean…why can’t we get our shit together and elect a decent mayor?
Oh, and remember the racist recall of Sawant? That was nice.
A little history:
Councilmember Alex Pedersen (District 4, Northeast Seattle), and Council’s Transportation Chair, issued the following statement after initial election day results show Seattle Prop 1, or STBD, is passing.
Well maybe the process should be streamlined, but that does not justify seizing public land for a quasi-private use. If it does then I can just gather a few land challenged neighbors and a rototiller and plant a “well tended native plant garden” in Volunteer Park.
Unpaving Paradise went through this process and created a new p-patch successfully. Could be streamlined like all process. Not impossible.
That garden looks terrible. I’m glad they’re getting rid of it.
The garden looks like crud. Olympia commies are just as bad at agriculture as the Soviet communists were lol
I’m trying to wrap my head around the fact that both this garden and the taking of half the street on East Pine in front of it for a mural was done with zero community input. The amount of people involved with the mural or the garden that were actually neighborhood residents is pretty slim. The vast majority didn’t even live on Capitol Hill. It feels like the neighborhood was snatched from under us during CHOP. Colonized, if you will. And the taking of the space in the park and the blocking off half the road for a mural was just a way for the occupying force to assert their dominance. And they certainly did.
That’s not true. Of course the garden was made with with community input and by locals! I know some of them personally. They’re my neighbors. Is there something about these gardeners in particular that would lead certain observers to assume they’re not from around here?
Also, “neighborhood snatched from under us,” come on. It’s some sunflowers and broccoli! Calm down!
The man behind Black Star Farmers had lived in Seattle for 2 years on Beacon Hill prior to chop. He never lived on Capitol Hill and had zero pre-chop history in Cal Anderson. I listened to his talks and he stated that only POC would be allowed to be a part of it. I don’t know if the lack of POC volunteers was what made him relent but of course that hit the wrong way, to exclude over 90% of those who use the park. He constantly ties in his black nationalist ideology to the park and its activities. Racial nationalism is racist regardless of who’s doing it. And yes, the website for the farm did post in support of those who committed the massacre and Israel a few days ago. I am including one screenshot here and included another one in a previous post.
“Racial nationalism is racist everywhere” you say, and then call out BSF for supporting Palestinians, a people fighting against ethnic cleansing from a racially nationalist ethnostate. C’mon man, that hypocrisy is wild
That’s ironic because Black Star Farmers ideology is racial nationalism. And Africatown is a taxpayer subsidized project to create a black nationalist community. That said, the statements put out by Black Star Farmers was not just criticism of Israel. Or support of the Palestinians. It was support of targeting innocent Jewish people for murder, kidnapping, and rape. Stop weaponizing the Palestinian cause to justify black racism. Let’s not forget in this city and other places of this country there has been open support for anti-Jewish violence that has nothing to do with the Palestinian cause. The problem isn’t us.
Untrue
Really depends on your definition of community. I was there, I lived on the hill for many years and I approved this garden 🪴
One of CHOP’s demands was to defund SPD. How did that work out? Is crime a thing of the past?
As a long time gardener, long time P-Patch program gardener, and long time Capitol Hill resident this is a long time coming. This garden is a pile of crap; none that have continued “contributions” have any clue what they are doing garden-wise…. Total slack-a$$. It only exists because of race-based associations, which, of course, is racist. There is very little public soil on the hill (the weird dirt system covering the Cal Anderson reservoir does not count), this should be used by people not ideology. Can’t wait till the $3 Bill outdoor movies return to this area next year… Anything else!!!
Finally, an adult has entered the chat.
Only in Seattle would the proposed removal of an unsanctioned and virtually untended “garden” planted during a time of utter chaos be considered racist.
100% agree. I wonder how many of my neighbors feel the same as you do but I don’t know it. I wish we could band together to help shape our neighborhood instead of having forced on us whatever politicians (usually done under the pressure of the activist industry) push on us. I thought progressives believed neighborhoods should have a right to self-determination? The overwhelming amount of people making these decisions, including the BLMG people, don’t even live on Capitol Hill.
It looks quite a bit better than most of the other plantings throughout the park in my opinion, the wildlife thinks so too!
p.s. they’ve figured out movies in a whole lot of parks without this specific configuration, not sure why they can’t find a way to make this happen anywhere else in the park…
We don’t need another reminder of the disaster that was CHOP. I hope the City sticks by its decision and doesn’t cave to far-left anarchists.
as a black man from Seattle I have one thing to say,
The mixed opinion makes Seattle a racist liberal city.
Enjoy being white everybody!
Oh, put it back in the deck.
A handful of activists dug up the park and put this fake garden there. It was never anything but a fake display by fake activists, many of whom invaded Capitol Hill that month. The sooner it’s gone the sooner Cal Anderson can be restored to more normal.
This garden is a beautiful blessing, and I am deeply saddened by the plans to remove it, especially for turf.
The garden is not only part of a legacy of occupied protest, Black and Indigenous sovereignty, and community autonomy, but it is also a bastion of biodiversity in the densest neighborhood in the PNW.
It is important for education, it provides medicine, it is a place of refuge, and it is LIFE! To destroy that in order to have a lawn is myopic, colonial, and a microcosm of the climate crisis.
For folks saying the garden is messy — it’s not. It is actively maintained and cared for. There is a plan for each bed (a pollinator bed, a medicine bed, a native plant bed, and a BIPOC bed), as well as an overall gardening philosophy that allows for plants to move through their whole lifecycle. Weeds are removed, but there is a belief that plants can crowd each other and coexist while still being managed.
I am a professional gardener, and I am inspired by the space. Is it perfect? NO! That’s the point. How else are people supposed to learn?
Save BLMG!
Thank you!
The stupid anarchist garden was used as part of the false narrative to justify the CHOP occupation of Cal Anderson Park. It was an effective propaganda tool that attracted gun-toting leftist radicals and vagrants to come live in the park for months resulting in millions of dollars of damage to Capitol Hill. Those that vandalized the park should be paying for its removal.
Thank God! I am TOTALLY pro free food forests / guerrilla gardening to achieve them. hell.. put a few in Cal Anderson. But that was the absolute worst place for one, because it’s the only possible space space for community events
What a weak statement from SPR, they fail to mention where in Cal Anderson they have offered relocation, nor have they shown any efforts to find other locations with water and electricity (FYI, they’re all over the park). Doesn’t the hill and lawn area provide more seating? If not, didn’t SPR just spend a bunch of time and money building a large ampither a few bus stops away from here in volunteer park?
FYI, potable water and electrical infrastructure capable of serving events with stages and performances is not all over the park as you have stated.
I’ve seen events with stages on the main lawn…
I’ve seen people play soccer on the main lawn…. My witnessing this does not mean that the main lawn is well equipped to handle soccer matches like the play field.
It’s a bit different scenario, you’re claiming there’s not suitable infrastructure when there clearly is… The potable water at the shelter house and bathrooms is often unavailable or out of service, why not focus on making this work rather than using it as an excuse to remove these gardens?
At first I was angry about this. But thank you for the update. It seems SPR tried to save the garden by offering a different location – within Cal Anderson (!!) or a different park altogether. The gardeners are choosing to let it go to make a point. If their true focus was plant medicine and gardening, they’d save their plants and take a new spot in Cal Anderson.
I’m happy the amphitheatre will return. I miss gatherings there like the Trans Pride stage and movies in the park. It’s a great space for the community. The garden serves a tiny population and this is not the best location for it. If it was placed in the middle of a sports field it would have been removed long ago. Parks has offered to relocate the garden to another spot in Cal Anderson and the organizers didn’t take them up on it. They should be willing to negotiate a compromise and not be so stubborn.