By Erin Hawkins
Olympic Peninsula News Group
SEQUIM — Tenants of Sunbelt Apartments will soon enjoy fresh produce with a new community garden installed right in their backyard.
Windermere Real Estate brokers from the Sequim-East and Sunland offices gathered June 9 for the organization’s annual Community Service Day to rebuild the community garden at Serenity House’s Sunbelt Apartments at 505 S. Fifth Ave. in Sequim.
“This is the first of many we want to put in,” said Sally French, Serenity House Board of Directors member and coordinator of the project.
“For residents who live here, the surplus goes to the kitchen.”
Sunbelt Apartments are a permanent supportive housing unit run by Serenity House and funded by proceeds from the Serenity House Thrift Shop and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The apartments support a community of homeless and disabled adults. The staff onsite help stabilize the tenants by enabling them to get medical care, mental health care, substance recovery, financial, legal, caregiving and transportation services.
French said she had the idea of rebuilding a community garden at Sunbelt Apartments to serve Serenity House tenants and other programs such as the Single Adult Shelter.
The volunteers planted vegetable starts and seeds of peppers, spinach, lettuce, zucchini, yellow squash, wax beans, green beans and peas in eight garden boxes behind the Sunbelt Apartments unit.
“Gardening, we find, is dirt therapy,” said Kevin Harkins, Serenity House operations director.
Harkins said the community garden allows Sunbelt residents to form a garden club, giving them a purpose, providing fresh vegetables and helping to create a positive connotation for the supportive housing unit in the local neighborhood.
Jimmy Waters and Kyle Frtiz of All in One Services donated their services and machinery to clear the old garden boxes, dirt and weeds to make space for the new garden beds.
Cascade Bark also donated 8 yards of soil and a load of wood chips to fill in between the beds.
For more information on how to support the homeless in Clallam County through Serenity House, call 360-452-7224 or email serenity@serenityhouseclallam.org.
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Erin Hawkins is a reporter with the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which is composed of Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. Reach her at ehawkins@sequimgazette.com.
