Down by the River

Chickens and art crafted from found objects make for a lively Georgetown garden. Photo: Dan Corum

Each July, Seattle’s Georgetown neighborhood celebrates its bucolic past with a garden tour that can best be described as eclectic.

Visiting Georgetown today, you get the sense of a restless place, jets coming in low overhead and laden big rigs barreling up and down freeway off-ramps, which penetrate the heart of the neighborhood. The cluck of chickens may not drown out the constant hoot of train whistles, but on entering the many gardens of this neighborhood you get a deeper and more permanent sense of the place and its history.

The roar of air traffic is a constant in this neighborhood that is both industrial and residential. Photo: Dan Corum

Laura Cassidy, a writer for the Seattle Weekly, says of Georgetown, “Just walking through the streets you witness post-squat, industrial bohemian chic.” This is certainly true. But the gardens of the neighborhood harken to an even earlier pre-industrial time, when the Duwamish River loope...