Amy Pennington created urbangardenshare.org to connect gardens with those who want to tend them. Pennington builds and tends gardens through her business, Go Go Green Garden. Photo: Ritzy Ryciak

Barbara from Ballard is looking for someone to take the lead. Aeranthes of Capitol Hill is into sun-ripe tomato-basil salads. And Mimi is ready to go Dutch in Ravenna.

They’ve all posted on Urbangardnenshare.org, a new local web site poised to become the Match.com of the spade-and-shovel set.

“It’s a mix between private P-patch and online dating,” said founder Amy Pennington.

Call it E-farmony.  Would-be gardeners describe the type and location of their desired garden space. Those with gardens to share describe the space they’ve got to grow.

The listings are free and the focus is local.

“My goal is to connect people in the same neighborhood,” she said. The site’s tag line: “Fall in love with your neighbor.”

Pennington has already fallen in love with gardening. She designs and tends edible gardens for clients of  Go Go Green Garden, her three year-old business. She came up with the idea for a garden-matching web site after taking an intensive organic gardening class last year.

 Four people in her class of sixteen didn’t even have a yard in which to grow things.

“I just thought that was so peculiar,” she said.

But it’s not uncommon. Each year about 6,000 people mulch, hoe, and harvest in the City of Seattle’s neighborhood P-patch program, which boasts 70 gardens. Many more would-be gardeners are still standing at the gate.

Hazel Bhang Barnett, a spokesperson for the program, said 1,600 to 1,800 people are on the wait list. Getting access to a P-patch near downtown could take as long as three years.

Seattle voters last year passed a parks levy that includes $2 million for the pea patch program, so more city-owned garden space is on the way.

In the meantime, interest in gardening is growing faster than zucchini in summertime.
 “We saw a big increase, especially last year,” Bhang Barrett said of inquiries.  “As the weather gets better we expect the wait list will grow.”

The shortage of public garden space, coupled with the recession, has made the idea of sharing private gardens especially relevant, Pennington said. People are getting more and more interested in growing their own food at home, but it doesn't always make sense to hire someone to do it.

"It doesn’t weigh out economically, necessarily, for someone to pay for my services,” she said.

Those who have the time and skills to raise their own food frequently lack the space in which to do it, and vice-versa.

Age is often a dividing line.

“It seems like most of the gardeners are young people who live in apartments and most of the homeowners tend to be older,” Pennington said.

Urbangardenshare.org gives them both an opportunity to grow.