Ballard P-Patch will live on, thanks to an Amazon donation

A large Amazon donation pushed the community garden past its fundraising finish line.

Gardeners in Ballard are celebrating the preservation of a tiny patch of green in a densifying city.

The Ballard P-Patch community garden donates 1,300 of produce to food banks every year. Non-gardeners also rely on the garden for open space.

Over the last year, the Ballard P-Patch community garden has been trying to raise money to save its land from development. The church that owned the property had to sell the land, in order to pay for a remodel, forcing the gardners to purchase the land.

Now, Cindy Krueger, a gardener there, said Amazon has pitched in more than a quarter million dollars.

“A lot of foundations that would have normally supported us said, 'We’re really redirecting a lot of our efforts to social justice and to Covid,'" said Krueger, who led the fundraising campaign. "And that made perfect sense. So to get that phone call, which was unsolicited — I was just breathless.”

Most of the money to save the garden came from King County grants. Washington state also donated around a quarter million dollars, and a community bank provided a bridge loan earlier this year.

However, many of the garden's promised sources of funding depended on coming up with matching funds from the community. That proved to be the hard part, Krueger said, due to restrictions on gatherings that limited the gardeners' ability to fundraise. It's been a logistical challenge that's hobbled many non-profits.