Highline SeaTac Botanical Garden

Text Box: "The Seike Garden: An American Story"

The Highline Botanical Garden Foundation and the Highline Historical Society invite you to join us at 2 p.m. on Saturday, February 2nd at SeaTac City Hall for the premiere showing of award winning filmmaker Ken Slusher's newest documentary, "The Seike Garden: An American Story"

The 30-minute movie recounts the 5 year community effort to relocate the Seike Japanese Garden. It chronicles the history of the garden, cooperative efforts by local governments, nonprofits, and citizens to save the garden, and the physical challenge of relocating and replicating a 45 year-old living work of art. It also highlights the seminal roles that immigrant families have played in building the Highline community, a story that has been repeated in thousands of communities across America.

Shinichi Seike immigrated from Japan in the early 1920’s. He opened an import/export business in Seattle, and like thousands of other Japanese Americans, the Seike family was interned during World War II. Upon regaining their freedom, the family opened Des Moines Way Nursery near SeaTac airport. In 1961 the family, under the direction of Hiroshima designer Shintaro Okada, constructed a quarter-acre Japanese Garden as a memorial to middle son Toll, who was killed in action while serving with the U.S. Army 442nd Regimental Combat Team in Germany.

Expansion of SeaTac airport in the early 21st century necessitated that the garden either be relocated or sold. The film tells the (literally) moving story of the community effort to save this living gem. Using personal interviews and images drawn from family photos, Super 8 footage of original garden construction, and more recent still and motion photography, the film details the fascinating array of social, financial, and logistical hurdles involved in such projects.

A question and answer session with the film maker will follow the premiere. Admission is free.

For directions to the City Hall, click here

For a press release with further details, click here