As the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport expanded, several homes and parks were relocated to make space for its third runway, erasing entire neighborhoods.
The Neighborhood Heritage Garden now seeks to immortalize what was lost in Sea-Tac's expansion.
In 2016 the board of Highline SeaTac Botanical Garden received a grant from the Airport Community Ecology (ACE) Small Matching Grants Fund to bring the Heritage Garden to life.
The grant allows community members from SeaTac, Burien, and Des Moines to apply for up to $10,000 in funding for improvements to the local environment.
Students of Highline College’s Urban Agriculture Class will recreate historic gardens from the area as inspiration for the new Heritage Garden. They will document trees and plants used from decades ago for the new space and conduct interviews and research in order to learn more about the past that they are trying to recreate.
“It shows a history of what a neighborhood was like in the 1940s and 1950s,” said Wendy Morgan, vice president of the board of the Highline SeaTac Botanical Garden. “For me, it’s something that brings the community together. The goal for us of getting that grant is that it fosters more community involvement in a public space that people can enjoy and learn from.”
With so much development in the Puget Sound region, the garden will stand in for history that existed before the international airport grew to accommodate the rising population.
