Burnside will become a bouquet of flowers

An urban farm emerges in an unlikely location

A flower farm emerges as part of a series of works programs at Old Town youth mentoring program, P:ear. Photo courtesy of Flower Works director Marianne Copene

Hopeful green starts are emerging in a neatly planted farm next to the gates to Chinatown. “Have a blessed day,” someone calls out to me as if to confirm not all is lost on Northwest Fourth and Burnside.

The youth mentoring group, P:ear, is the guiding force behind the new garden project.

P:ear stands for Project: Education, Arts, Recreation. It helps youth living on the street transition into housing. Programs include teaching classes in bike repair, running a bike shop on Southeast 122nd and Stark and a barista training school inside its Old Town center and art gallery.

In the spring, P:ear added flower works to its programming, initially utilizing a greenhouse and plot of land in Northeast Portland’s Cully neighborhood as a teaching site. The NW Examiner previously covered the project, here, and the new Q-Side Skate Park.

Marianne Copene is director of the flower works program. She works alongside the youth at P:ear’s new farm, hosting drop-in hours on topics such as irrigation and plant propagation. She and her flower works cohort primed the boards for the raised beds, hauled the soil in and planted the beds.

“The Home Builders Foundation were key in getting supplies, and provided a huge amount of support and guidance,” she said, adding that Taylor Smith Carpenters assembled the beds, and Building to Scale, a nonprofit trade school, built the shed. “Community support has been instrumental in getting this up and running.”

Copene expects the Burnside flowers to bloom in late July, when they’ll be cut and sold to community restaurants and shops. The flowers — foxglove, dahlias marigolds and delphiniums — will also supply flower pop-ups hosted at the P:ear coffee shop, where baristas are already crafting flower petal infusions and flower petal ice cubes for elevated coffee drinks.

“The process highlights the medium as an art form,” said Copene, “and asks who gets access to this beauty?”

The blooms will also be used in the form of dye plants and dried wreaths, integrating the flowers around the P:ear community.

Placing a working farm amid the cars and chaos of Burnside is no small endeavor, Copene says. It places agriculture at the core of the urban center, while provoking larger questions around houselessness, beauty and repair. Care of plants promotes healing in the caretakers, whether on a farm or at the heart of the city.