Sewage plant gardens put water cycles on display

Originally published Saturday, January 1, 2000

By AMY E. NEVALA
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Looking for public art in Renton? Head to the sewage plant.

At the northwest corner of the 85-acre East Reclamation plant on 1200 Monster Road S.W. blooms Waterworks Gardens, a wetland project that marries industry, art and science to demonstrate the natural cleansing process of water as it exits pesticide-frosted golf greens and polluted parking lots and slowly filters through the land, refreshed for reuse.

In 1990 when artist Lorna Jordan received the commission to create public art at the sewage treatment plant, she discarded the notion of dreary detention ponds and stinky sewage. She also nixed traditional public art, such as sculpture or murals.

Instead, she and Seattle landscape architects Jones & Jones made the land their multifaceted canvas; planting a garden with native vegetation, providing wildlife habitat and creating a living, breathing science project detailed with elaborate mosaic stone designs.

"I wanted water treatment to be

an opportunity rather than a problem," Jordan said. "This was a chance to connect people to the cycles and mysteries of water."

"Phooey on fenced-off, industrial-looking plants that leave people wondering about water treatment. Let's usher the people in so they can see how natural water treatment can be done," Jordan said. "And let's give them a beautiful place to see it."

Waterworks Gardens communicates the story of water flow and toxin removal through a series of five garden "rooms."

The rooms, connected by footpaths and punctuated with benches, mosaics and native plants, allow people to witness the water treatment process.

The eight-acre garden begins at the first room, the Knoll, a collection of free-standing columns of field-collected basalt perched on a promontory. Here, foul water flowing in from parking lots and golf greens burbles beneath the Knoll's rusted walkway gates before entering the Funnel and the Passage, a series of 11 leaf-shaped ponds. In these rooms the cleansing process begins as particulates settle in these quiet waters.

The ponds bookend the Grotto, considered the core of the garden.

Gorgeous with its sunset-hued pink, lavender and peach stone floor and walls, "people have even had weddings in the Grotto," said senior project coordinator Cynthia Gould Brown with the King County Public Art Program. The Grotto resembles a cave or secret garden -- one expects gnomes to run across the flower mosaic floor in this fairy-tale setting, which drips mosses and vines and twinkles with elaborate stone patterns.

Beyond the Grotto the ponds drain into the final room -- a long marsh, dubbed the Release -- for further particulate filtering before the purified water reaches Springbrook Creek.

Dedicated in June 1996, Waterworks Gardens is a collaborative project of the King County Department of Natural Resources, the King County Public Arts Program and the city of Renton.