New Endowment Fund Expands Seattle’s Community Gardens

By Elizabeth Gray

Mary Jones was a gardener long before moving to Seattle more than 30 years ago. For the past 20 years, she has been gardening with her partner, Giff, at the Eastlake P-Patch. Mary and Giff also garden at the Mesa Harmony Garden, a collective garden in Santa Barbara, California, which, like their Seattle P-Patch, also supports a food bank. The Jones’s are big proponents of land preservation, and support The Nature Conservancy, as well as educational and nature-oriented nonprofits in their home states of Washington and California.

Last summer, Giff and Mary approached GROW President Eric Todderud, a fellow Eastlake P-Patch gardener, with the idea of making a significant contribution to GROW for the purchase of land to build a new P-Patch garden. After several meetings and chats together with Eric, the Jones’s established GROW’s first endowment fund. This resource provides our organization with the financial stability to allow us to keep preserving urban garden space in Seattle. It will also open the possibility to let GROW create another P-Patch for our diverse community, if such an opportunity arises.

Mary and Giff’s generosity prompted GROW to create an Endowment Advisory Committee and write an Endowment and Related Investment Policy. GROW now has a Bequest Intention Form for those who wish to notify the board of their intent to leave a legacy to GROW in their will or estate plans.

The Endowment Advisory Committee is already guiding the dream of creating a more stable future for GROW, which means a more stable future for Seattle’s beloved community garden network. 

For more information about GROW’s endowment fund, please contact Elizabeth Gray, Co-Treasurer for GROW, Elizabeth.g@grownorthwest.org or Eric Todderud, attorney and President of GROW, Eric.t@grownorthwest.org