SEFS communications team traveled to UW Farm’s Wapato Pond to speak with Kove Janeski, the farm’s Operations Lead. While volunteering in the sun and trimming garlic for the week’s CSA baskets we got to speak to Janeski about the Wapato Pond project and what the team has planned next. Below, you’ll find a brief write-up that Janeski put together about the project and his team’s fundraising efforts. We hope that you’ll go visit the Wapato Pond this summer or sign up to volunteer on the farm!

As an extension of the wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ – Intellectual House’s Native Garden, an aquaculture plot has taken shape at the UW Farm’s site at the Center for Urban Horticulture. The clay-lined waterbody will grow wapato (Sagittaria latifolia), a plant that is native to most of the Americas. According to the Confluence Project, a non-profit that elevates Indigenous voices along the Columbia River, wapato was an especially important food source in the Pacific Northwest. Along the middle and lower Columbia River, for instance, families would harvest large patches of wapato in stream banks, sloughs, and marshes for a month or more out of the year. The plant was so abundant that it became the main food source for the botanist David Douglas, when he visited the area in the 1820s.

With guidance from Farm Manager Perry Acworth and Landscape Faculty Julie Johnson, I have been the design/build manager for this project. In the near future, this aquaculture plot will share the northeastern corner of the UW Farm with a greenhouse and wash/pack facility. Because the aquaculture plot does not have a naturally occurring water source, a rainwater harvesting and storage system in this planned structure will be integral in the aquaculture plot’s long-term success – especially during Seattle summers. 

Although wapato is the aquaculture plot’s sole crop for now, a walking path bisects the plot and could allow for multiple planting zones in the future. This means that the UW Farm could be other water-loving plants alongside wapato in the future – cranberries, lotus, rice and beyond!

Janeski has worked diligently to secure funding through scholarships and grants to build out the pond. A scholarship from the Northwest Horticultural Society, a CSF mini grant and further funding from UW Solar got the team off to a great start. More recently, the College of the Environment voted to award this project an additional $5,000 in funding. Janeski and Acworth estimate that about 250 different volunteers worked on different stages of the pond project to get it where it is today. That includes corporate work parties coming from Nestle, Expedia and Amazon.