Picture a big bowl of steaming Vietnamese pho. A handful of fresh greens goes on top: mint leaves, basil, fragrant herbs. The soup just isn’t the same without them. In Vietnam, these greens are called “rau thơm,” meaning “fragrant herbs.” In Seattle, USA, they grew in a very unusual place: on a steep hill that residents turned into a staircase of garden beds.
How Vietnamese people came to Seattle
In 1975, the long war in Vietnam ended, and many families were forced to leave the country. Some made the journey by boat, others by plane. Some eventually ended up in Washington State, where Seattle is located. They arrived with small suitcases. But what they missed most wasn’t their belongings—it was the taste of home: the smell of broth, fresh herbs, familiar vegetables.
Later, a neighborhood known as Little Saigon took shape in Seattle. Shops and cafés opened there, serving favorite dishes. But making authentic pho calls for fresh greens, which weren’t as easy to find then as they are now.
A hill that didn’t want to be a garden
Seattle’s International District is home to the Danny Woo Garden. It was established in 1975, the same year the war ended. It was named after local businessman Danny Woo. The site chosen for the garden was a challenging one: a hillside so steep it would be hard even to walk on, let alone grow vegetables.
Rain can easily wash soil down a slope like that, and garden beds on a slant are like a slide, with everything rolling down. So the hillside wasn’t left as it was; it was turned into terraces. These are broad steps, each with a low wall to hold the soil in place. Imagine a staircase where every step is the size of a vegetable plot—that’s what this garden looks like. It’s a little smaller than a football field, but almost all of it climbs uphill.
This is a very old technique. People have built terraces on hillsides for centuries, including on rice fields in Asia. But in a modern American city, right beside tall buildings, a garden like this looks remarkable.
What is a P-Patch, and what does a surname have to do with it?
The Danny Woo Garden is connected to a program that began in Seattle in 1973. It’s called P-Patch. The first community garden of this kind was set up on land belonging to the Picardo family, and the name “P-Patch” comes from their surname. In English, “patch” means a small garden plot. The idea was simple: many city residents don’t have a yard at home, but would like to grow something. The city offered them shared land, and everyone could get a small plot of their own.
Most of the plots at the Danny Woo Garden went to older residents of the neighborhood. Many had come from Asia, including Vietnamese residents. They grow vegetables and herbs they’ve known since childhood. For someone far from home, a garden plot can mean a great deal. It’s a piece of land where they can plant something familiar and watch it grow.
Architecture you can eat
Architecture usually means buildings: houses, bridges, towers. But this garden shows that architecture can take other forms, too. The terraces and their walls, the narrow paths between the beds, and the steps leading uphill—all of it is thoughtfully built, like a small city. Only instead of people, it’s “inhabited” by tomatoes, mint, and beans.
Pho tells this story well. Think of the greens on its surface, and you get a chain: a hill, then terraces, then garden beds, and finally a bowl on the table. The refugees were helped both by engineering and by their own determination. They didn’t wait for everything to fall into place on its own. They took what they had—even a steep hillside—and turned it into a place where they could grow the taste of home.
The main idea
This story isn’t about records or spectacular buildings. It’s about how you can build a home even when the land is difficult to work with. If need be, a hillside becomes a staircase, and a staircase becomes a garden. People who came to Seattle from far away did something similar: they found a place for their food, their traditions, and their celebrations.
The next time you see a bowl of soup topped with greens, remember the hill in Seattle. There may be a little of it in that bowl, too.
