By Carey Thornton, Garden Educator

Volunteer Veggie Crew is finally about to begin at Bradner Gardens! Signs of spring are everywhere – cherry and magnolia trees are abloom, the sun actually shines in between rain showers and I’m hearing the first sneezes of allergy season.

For those of you itching to get your fingers in the soil and touching some greenery, come out and join the veggie crew at Bradner Gardens Park in the Mt. Baker neighborhood in south Seattle. Starting next Tuesday (April 1 from 4-7 p.m.), we’ll have weekly volunteer work parties to dig, plant, sow, weed, prune and harvest from the community learning garden.

If you’ve never been to Bradner, it is truly one of the most beautiful neighborhood parks in Seattle. Bradner is home to a p-patch community garden, basketball court, beehives, an ornamental border planted by Master Gardeners, and the coolest public restroom you’ve ever seen!

Don’t miss the demonstrations of street and fruit trees, rain collection system, solar panels, scarecrows, working windmill and tons of art hidden around the garden – not to mention the great view of downtown. It’s truly a hidden gem!

This year, our volunteer veggie crew is launching Bradner Skill Share – each work party will incorporate an educational component where we’ll learn a useful skill from one another. For example, learn how to build a trellis or teach us how to cook your favorite soup.

As part of our work party, we’ll kick off the first Bradner Skill Share. Join us for a tour of the park and go on a “weed walk” to identify common garden weeds. Find out which common weeds are actually quite tasty or useful for medicine. We’ll taste wild plants along with some edible ornamentals around the park. We may even harvest enough weeds to make a wild salad!

Do you have a story to tell about a particular weed? Want to know what shotweed or chickweed taste like? Wonder what that fuzzy plant with the tiny purple flowers is? Join our Bradner veggie crew and take part in the inaugural Bradner Skill Share — no RSVP required, just show up and be ready to get dirty next Tuesday, April 1; 4-7 p.m.!

If you’d like to volunteer with Seattle Tilth on an ongoing basis, please complete our Volunteer Registration Form and attend a Volunteer Orientation. Thanks for your interest in volunteering with Seattle Tilth!

Delve Into Organic Gardening

Want to take your organic gardening skills to the next level?

Our Comprehensive Organic Gardener course will be taking place at Bradner in a couple of weeks! Join us for our most extensive organic veggie gardening course and gain both scientific and practical information to grow a bountiful garden and make new friends along the way.

• April 9-30; Wednesdays, 7-9 p.m. & Saturdays, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. at Bradner Gardens Park.

Find out more and register.