Our Story

Today when you walk along Queen Anne Avenue, you know it’s the beating heart of the neighborhood. It’s replete with all kinds of shops from clothes to dog toys, from an old-time butcher to ready-to-eat meals, grocery stores, and plenty of restaurants. The atmosphere on a summer evening is invigorating. It feels like a small town nestled inside a big city. At the height of summer (or anytime), you can stroll the Ave and pop into one of the shops for pizza or a refreshing frozen treat. On Thursdays, you can stop by the Farmers Market, pick up some fresh local produce, and dine al fresco from the array of food trucks.

Welcoming everyone to our neighborhood are flourishing perennial gardens at Galer, Boston, and McGraw.

It wasn’t always this way.

Galer before gardens installation

McGraw before gardens installation

We are your friends, neighbors, and business owners who came together in 2003, under the auspices of the QA Community Council’s Parks Committee, to brainstorm solutions to what we saw as a grey and drab retail core badly in need of a facelift. Wherever we looked along Queen Anne Avenue we saw a mix of broken sidewalks, faded crosswalks, littered streets, weeds, rusty street signs, and the occasional lonely planter box. The only attractive natural elements were the mature maple street trees, planted in the 1980’s by neighbors with inspiration and financial help from the City’s tree planting program.

With a Small & Simple Grant awarded by the Department of Neighborhoods, Picture Perfect Queen Anne enlisted Queen Anne resident and urban planner, Don Miles, principal at Zimmer, Gunsul, Frasca Partnership, to spearhead the creation of a plan for the streetscape—the public space along the Ave’s six block commercial core between Galer and McGraw Streets.

We hosted three community meetings in 2005-2006 to envision design possibilities. The result was the Queen Anne Avenue Streetscape Master Plan. It reflected the community’s desire for an attractive and safe commercial core that included

  • Gathering places with seating

  • Street-level vegetation

  • Public art

  • Safe sidewalks

  • Pedestrian-level lighting

  • No litter

  • Clear street signs

  • Human scale store fronts

With the Streetscape Master Plan as our guide, we got right to work. In collaboration with SDOT, the Department of Neighborhoods, the Office of Economic Development, and our Queen Anne Community of business owners, residents, organizations, and churches, we were able to:

  • Install benches between Galer and Garfield and at Boston

  • Realign the intersection at Galer to improve sightlines for pedestrians and drivers

  • Shorten the pedestrian crossing distances at Galer and McGraw to improve pedestrian safety

  • Create streetside gardens at Galer, Boston and McGraw and alongside the first tier of the historic Galer stairs

  • Plant Parroquia trees at Galer and Ginkgo trees on Boston

  • Repair and replace sidewalks

  • Enlarge tree wells to provide additional growing space for tree roots

The gardens at Galer, Boston, and McGraw transformed the streetscape and enlivened the character of our neighborhood’s business core. Queen Anne firms Land2c Landscape Architecture and Virginia Hand Design donated the designs of the streetside gardens to the community. Land2c also donated the design for the gardens alongside the Galer Stairs and provides ongoing landscape guidance.

Planting the garden at Galer in 2009

Planting the garden at McGraw in 2009

With the City’s focus on multi-story, mixed-use commercial buildings, Picture Perfect Queen Anne has engaged with developers to ensure that the Streetscape Master Plan’s recommendations are an integral part of all new projects proposed for Queen Anne Avenue. This includes advocating for public space, street furnishings, pedestrian-focused lighting, and storefronts that compliment those of older established buildings.

The Upper Queen Anne Neighborhood Design Guidelines, drafted by the community in 2009 under the leadership of the Queen Anne Community Council’s Land Use Review Committee (LURC) is another document whose recommendations developers are required to consider as they design their buildings. Picture Perfect Queen Anne works closely with LURC to advocate for our community’s priorities as projects make their way through the City’s neighborhood design review process.

In 2009, we incorporated Picture Perfect Queen Anne as a charitable nonprofit organization. As stewards of the Queen Anne Avenue Streetscape Master Plan, we remain committed to keeping our commercial core inviting by caring for the gardens and maintaining the other improvements the community has made over the years as well as advocating for gathering places and public spaces. This hyperlocal, all volunteer, grassroots neighborhood organization is still dedicated to ensuring that the heart of our hilltop neighborhood remains pedestrian- and family-friendly, environmentally resilient, vibrant, and welcoming for all.

Come join us in this venture.

Garden Locations

Resource Documents