The PlayGarden Blog

Thank You Columbia Bank We are excited to share that we have received a $15,000 grant from Columbia Bank to help ensure there are no barriers to outdoor play! Each year, we provide over $40,000 in financial aid, allowing more than half our program participants to attend at a little to no cost. Ensuring that...Read More

Introducing The PlayGarden Review, Fall 2025!! We are excited to announce the publication of the second edition of our zine, The PlayGarden Review. This edition of our zine highlights the stories behind some of the cornerstones of PlayGarden. From interviews with our groundskeeper on how he rebuilt the coop to our most iconic recipes, this...Read More

Welcome Our New Employees We are excited to announce that in the past month, we have added two new people to our PlayGarden team, Margot Bell and Mike Bernatovicz.  Margot Bell is joining PlayGarden as our new Supported Employment Job Coach. Margot is a Seattle native, moving back after spending four years at Vanderbilt University,...Read More

The Seattle PlayGarden and Seattle Parks are working to expand accessible playspace for people with disabilities! This project, titled “Adaptive Playfield at Colman Playground” meets a significant unmet need in the disability community for physical activity, sports and unstructured active play. “As a parent of children with disabilities, having an adaptive playfield would provide my...Read More

Remembering Rose Ellen Part 13: The South Bend Years-Rose Ellen’s death Rose Ellen lived at Carlyle Nursing Home for the next 13 years. I was 10 years old when she came to South Bend. I believe my sister Rosie did her sleuthing about two years after the move. In the next few weeks and months,...Read More

Remembering Rose Ellen Part 12: The dreaded side room “Rosie jumped out dorm window and ran away.” Then, after “straying” from the cottage, she is put in a side room. The staff note reads, “Rose is small in stature, eats good, wets the bed every night. She has strayed from the cottage, and had to...Read More

Remembering Rose Ellen Part 11: Moving Rose Ellen There was an early period where my grandparents feared Rose Ellen would be moved. A very polite exchange of letters took place then as well (dated March of 1962). The facility was growing rapidly and overcrowding and crumbling buildings were a constant threat even then. My grandparents...Read More

Remembering Rose Ellen Parts 9 & 10: Rose Ellen’s weekly letters home stop coming By the Fall of 1967, Papa Don and Grandmama had begun to seriously worry about Rose Ellen. In a letter from Papa Don to Mrs. Keren Young in the social work department, he expresses their worry. Dear Mr. Young, When we...Read More

Remembering Rose Ellen Part 8: A Birthday Party for Rose Ellen We celebrated a lot of birthdays at our house with nine kids, two parents and four grandparents. There were often more than one per month. My mother went all in on our birthdays. One year she took my whole Bluebird troop to the circus!...Read More

Remembering Rose Ellen Post 7: A Snapshot of Rose Ellen’s Correspondence Correspondence from my Grandmama and Papa Don and the staff included subjects such as notifications and requests to visit her or take her on summer vacation, her personal belongings and wardrobe, her daily activities and occasional mention of a social event she took part...Read More

Remembering Rose Ellen Part 6: Losing Ground Over the years at Fort Wayne, Rose Ellen seems to decline. When she entered the institution, she was a young woman who could compose a coherent letter in cursive and knew the multiplication tables, but during testing in 1951she is described as “depressed and homesick and called attention...Read More

Remembering Rose Ellen Part 5: Evaluating Rose Ellen In my work as a clinician, my first introduction to a child and their family often came from previous evaluations and reports. I too, wrote evaluations not all that different from what I read in the Indiana State archives. Learning about Rose Ellen from this clinical perspective,...Read More

Remembering Rose Ellen Part 4: The Indiana State Archives: Rose Ellen was admitted to The Indiana State School for Feeble-Minded Children in Fort Wayne, IN, in January 1933 at 19 years of age. She spent 38 years there. To receive the documents from the Indiana State Archives required a simple form.  I filled out the...Read More

Remembering Rose Ellen Part 3: A Timeline of Her Life ⬦⬦⬦ Rose Ellen:Birth to Age 6 1913-1919 My grandparents had more than their fair share of difficulties starting a family. Their first daughter, Virginia, was born on May 21, 1911 and died just a few days later, on June 4, 1911.  My Mother, Lou Ann...Read More

Remembering Rose Ellen Skeen: Part 2: Unraveling the story Many thousands of children deemed feeble-minded, idiots, morons and imbeciles were institutionalized from the 1920s right up to the 1970s. There were no services or support for parents and their children with disabilities in the community, no schools or therapy clinics. The prevailing belief was that...Read More

For many years, my brothers and sisters and I were raised to believe that our mother was an only child. We had just one aunt, on my father’s side of the family. No aunts, uncles, or cousins on my mom’s side. But that was not true. My mother had a sister that was kept secret...Read More

We are so excited to announce that the PlayGarden now has our own on-site, PlayGarden Job Coach! Meet Damion Hernstrom! Hi! As the new Job Coach here at PlayGarden, I’m excited to share what I’ve learned and experienced while working in the world of Supported Employment and Special Education for a combined ten-plus years. Moving...Read More

This last month we have had so many great people and organizations come and volunteer at the PlayGarden.  Thank you to Devon and Noosh from Seattle Tree Care for donating 10 yards of wood chips to mulch our trails!  Thank you to PlayGarden preschool parent Paul Olczak for organizing a work party with 8 members of his team from Microsoft on Thursday, 10/24....Read More

Looking to get more involved in the community? Do you believe in the PlayGarden’s mission and work? Check out our opening to join the Board of Directors. To learn more about joining the PlayGarden Board of Directors visit this link: https://seattleplaygarden.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Board-Opportunity-2024-25.pdfRead More

PlayGarden Job Coach for Supported Employment Staff The PlayGarden has been growing our supported employment for the last seven years. Supported employment allows us to hire adults with disabilities to work in our programs. Those employees are supported by a job coach who helps them to begin their careers, learn new tasks and skills, and...Read More

Today marks the first day of our Big-Littles Holiday Giving Campaign! We need your support more than ever before. The COVID-19 pandemic has hit children with disabilities and their families extraordinarily hard. Our families are not receiving the education, socialization and therapy support they need to thrive. The PlayGarden’s revenue is down over 30% but we...Read More

Thank you Blue Rose Foundation for your recent generous gift of $3000 to the Seattle Children’s PlayGarden. We appreciate your commitment and belief that equal access to resources start children on an early pathway to success, and strengthens our families and communities. Because of funders like you, we can provide preschool classes in person and in compliance with CDC, State, and local safety...Read More

Seattle— October 9, 2020 — We are so pleased to welcome visitors back to the Seattle Children’s PlayGarden. Over the last seven months the PlayGarden has been closely following City, County, State and Federal guidelines for parks, playgrounds and size of social gatherings. On October 5, 2020, the City of Seattle announced that parks and...Read More

Whether it is a person who uses a wheelchair that you see in the grocery store, a child in their class that has Autism, or a sibling with ADHD your child has someone in their life that has a disability that they might have questions about. Talking openly and honestly about disability with your kids...Read More

Learn respectful language to use when talking about disability or with people with disabilities.Read More

Today was one of those days that the full impact of the PlayGarden swept me off my feet. I started this overcast Saturday with a trip to …Read More

Last year we asked our community partner, Public Health Seattle & King County to take a look at our toolkit and share back their key take…Read More

Learn about the PlayGarden’s diverse team of staff.Read More

The Seattle Children’s PlayGarden is so excited to launch our new blog called Say “Yes!” to Kids with Disabilities. Over the nRead More

In February of last year I wrote the attached piece published in Crosscut about the destruction by the Parks department of our Wild Zone …Read More

I am like my mother. I pick things up on walks. There are a lot of beautiful things outside these days. On every walk I take I pick up be…Read More

Every time I see one of these bright cheerful Yellow ADA swings in a city park I am so proud. In June of 2008, PlayGarden Board Member an…Read More

One of our summer campers turned 5 this week! We celebrated in true PlayGarden style, with a birthday mud pie, a handmade piñata, and lol…Read More

Support the PlayGarden – Your Donations help fund all our great programs! #videoRead More