Remembering Eileen Eininger: A Love Story with Laughter

By Barb Donnette, Joyce Moty and Mary Jones

Heart full, Eileen Eininger (1949 - 2025) approached life with special humor. She made friends easily, and her answer to problems was to dig in and be helpful. She was the most successful volunteer, recruiter, and retainer because she made her volunteers feel appreciated, and they all shared laughter when working together staffing GROW's

many activities.  

Eileen lived next door to a new garden on Capitol Hill and, yes, she joined and had a garden plot. Forty years ago, Eileen joined the P-Patch Advisory Council, a non-profit formed to support the City's Program. Their mission was to help steward the 26 community gardens in Seattle at that time, and funds were needed. Eileen's organizing skills were needed as well, and she even put some of this energy toward helping create a P-Patch book of recipes and stories about the varied gardens. Eileen solicited recipes, tested the recipes at dinner parties with her team of volunteers, and then helped promote The City Gardener's Cookbook just in time for the P-Patch Program’s 20th anniversary in 1993. 

Success with this project led her fertile brain to move on to the next fundraising plan. A raffle for a handmade flower-and-vegetable-motif quilt. Imagine volunteers hand-stitching a queen-sized fabric masterpiece while cheerfully chatting with each other and being entertained by Eileen's garden stories.

Tickets were created to be sold to, and by, gardeners and even raffled out at the Seattle Flower Show. Gardeners naturally developed into sales staff, all organized by Eileen. Eileen attended many Gardener Gatherings promoting fundraising projects, recruiting volunteers, and just hanging out with like-minded folks, sharing a chuckle.

Over the years, there were three quilt fundraisers done, including the Many Flowered Quilt commemorating the national tragedy of 9-11. Also, in solidarity with our community across the country, flowers were collected at 9-11 grieving sites in the Seattle area and were composted at the Interbay P-Patch. This special compost was delivered to a sister community garden in NYC, and Eileen managed it all, quietly spreading warmth and laughter across our city and the country. 

Storage for all the events with their promotional materials, the cookbook inventory, classic P-Patch t-shirts, and even an eight-foot carrot windsock all lived in Eileen's basement. She called it her toy store, and it was always open for volunteers to pick up materials to help the P-Patches raise funds. Eileen loved taking action and celebrating the successes, the friendships, and the gardening.  

From those earlier days of the Seattle City P-Patch Program when Eileen first became involved, the program has grown to now include 90 different garden locations. Just as the P-Patch garden landscape has grown and changed, the supporting non-profit has, too, shifting its identity from the P-Patch Advisory Council, to the Friends of P-Patch, to the P-Patch Trust, and now to GROW. Today, GROW holds nine of the P-Patch gardens in a land trust. This stable structure ensures a stable future for these community gardens, something that was one of Eileen's passions. Her love of P-Patch community gardens will forever be remembered.