Fertile Ground Guesthouse

My husband & I stayed here for 3 glorious evenings this summer. What a hidden gem & the perfect hosts!
The back yard areas are full of trees & gardens to walk through or sit and relax in. The house is so cozy & quiet. We slept like babies with our windows open every night and woke up to a delicious breakfast; which our hosts had us write on our board door what time we wanted to eat each morning– who does that?
With coffee ready before that we wandered down one morning & watched one of our awesome hosts, Gail cooking up our breakfast. I felt a little guilty & lazy but she enjoys it & we had easy conversation. She ended up drawing us a super easy map to get us up to Olympic National Forest on back roads-​perfect!
Our room had plenty of space, a carafe of water with glasses & the bed was super comfy. Extra pillows & blankies in the closet… We couldn’t ask for more
Down the hall was a studio/​TV room/​Library. It’s super cozy with maybe hundreds of books to choose from if you’re into that sort of relaxing wind down time. They have all different types of books, maps & guides to look through. Wi Fi was available all through the property.
The bathroom was nice with fragrance free products & great water pressure.
It’s also super close to ‘downtown’ & the Sound-​easy walk down there.
We can’t wait to go back to the Pacific NW & our new ‘home away from home’ in Olympia! It’s an awesome town all around that is lucky to have Fertile Ground!
Cheers to Gail & Karen –6 stars!

Perfect. Exactly what I needed to take a break from my usual life. The friendliness of the hosts, the coziness of the room, and the charm of a soak in a claw foot tub have eased my troubled mind.

Stayed here a couple of years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. The owners are interesting, warm and friendly. Breakfast was excellent. Great location.

Really appreciated our very brief stay at Fertile Grounds Guest House. The room was clean, the bed was super comfy, the soap and shampoo were lovely, and the breakfast was fabulous. I hope I am able to return for a more leisurely visit.

There are a couple older reviews I noticed on here complaining about stuff that’s definitely been fixed since then — broken lights, some mattress issues and the like.
I’ve stayed in 2 of the 3 rooms in the guesthouse and spent time in the third while doing some work for the owners. My girlfriend and I found the place to be quite clean both times we stayed. There are some places where the paint needs work; BFD. Mostly the place is immaculate, the folks are friendly, the breakfast is good, the coffee is REAL good, and if you really like it, you might just strike up a barter for some help around the place, or gardening or something.
Insider tips: well okay maybe I’m not an insider, but charm-​wise, the West and North rooms are the best, and I-​need-​max-​space-​wise, the South room is the best but it hasn’t been prettified quite as much yet as the other two. My personal favorite is the West room.
Oh, and the library. One of the operators was a librarian. It’s ORGANIZED. Not by Dewey Decimal — it’s too small for that — but by color/​number coded stickers. If you’re a reader you could spend hours (days?) easily finding stuff you’re interested in — and they have some books you wouldn’t find many other places. And, the Olympia library is directly across the street! Stacks and stacks of books in case you run out of reading material in Fertile Ground’s library.
Fertile Ground is also SUPER convenient to downtown Olympia, really for-​reals walking distance to many restaurants, bars, and venues for entertainment, and it’s convenient to the freeway too.
The house is an absolutely beautiful Craftsman. If you get to know who’s working there a bit, hang out in the kitchen when they’re making breakfast and chat over coffee if that seems cool, because that kitchen? TO DIE FOR.
I can’t wait to see what the garden and grounds look like in the summertime, since we’ve only visited in the winter and fall. I’ll definitely be back, and I’ve already recommended it to friends and loved ones.
The only nitpick I agree with from another review is the lighting can be inadequate — from what I understand (we spoke about it), they’re switching over to the latest greatest LED bulbs as the older slow spirals burn out. We discussed the exact brand and I can tell you that when that switchover is complete, the lighting will be more than adequate and the color will be great (I use the same bulbs at home). Personally, I’d swap the bulbs out now to brighten the place up a bit and give the spirals away to someone who’ll use them until they burn out, but if all I can find to whine about are the light bulb choices… I don’t have any real complaints.
Go there, and walk to downtown Olympia. It’s a pretty city, and there’s a lot to see and do, and a LOT of great musicians. Fertile Ground is a great base for exploring, and you’ll meet some cool people too.

Great stay @ the 411 Union guest house. One bedroom with super comfy pull out bed. Nothing left to chance, all amenities in the cottage — bath products and fully equipped kitchen. My new home away com home!

Super quirky, super friendly, super comfortable. The gardens outside are beautiful, too — especially if you don’t subscribe to the artificial over-​manicured style. I would easily stay here again.

Food was awesome. A very nice place to stay if you’re spending some time in downtown Olympia.

Friendly hosts, peaceful atmosphere, wonderful grounds (chickens included), great place for interesting conversations. Yummy food too!
Great place for the business traveler that has had it with hotels! I have used the services of Fertile Ground over the past year when on business in Olympia. Nice place to come «home» to after a day of meetings & workshops.

This B&B is on the funky side and overpriced IMHO. B&Bs are supposed to be less expensive than area hotels, not more!
It’s run by 2 or 3 women though I only met one… Gail. She was nice enough most of the time, and made the necessary adjustments to my room and food, I have allergies to many things. She’s an old hippy-​type, which didn’t bother me in the least, and I really like all their «eco» practices. However, the place was not very clean, needs some repairs to walls and ceilings (peeling paint), dusting could be loads better too. I saw cobwebs in many places. They kept the place too chilly for me too. Damp air makes me cold, so I’m glad I brought layers, because I ended up needing them the whole time I was in this house.
One thing I really liked is the shared upstairs library. They have an interesting, eclectic collection of books, many movies, and some games too. The city library is very close too. I went there a couple of times to do some research and reading on environmental architecture and design.
The lighting throughout the Gueasthouw is inadequate in some places. Some fixtures didn’t even work such as the overhead light in the first floor bathroom. No wall switch anywhere. When I was told to pull the chain hanging from it, I did, and it came off the fixture! Neither Gail, nor I, nor my daughter was tall enough to put it back up while standing on a chair. And as this was also to be my bathroom for the next 5 days, I was surprised it was never fixed the whole time I was there. All we needed is a ladder, but she never produced one and never fixed it.
Apparently, Gail also uses this bathroom, which I wasn’t aware of. She lives in the converted garage out back, which has no plumbing, I guess. She did tell me the other guests would use it as it’s the only one on the first floor, and that both she and the other on site owner use it, but I thought she meant when they were in the house only, not all the time. Yet I couldn’t lock the bathroom door from inside my room, so people in there wouldn’t go into my bedroom. In fact, the only way to lock my bedroom door was with a hook and eye set-​up from inside my room. No way to lock it from the outside.
Security is really wanting here, especially since it’s located in a somewhat sketchy neighborhood. Despite that, I didn’t have anything stolen, but I would prefer to have been able to lock the doors of my room from the outside as well as the inside.
The furniture didn’t go well together. It all seemed to come from local 2^nd hand stores. I’d say the same for their dishes. My room felt cramped, I kept running into the bed frame or desk chair when I walked around in it. The bed was almost comfortable but it’s time to replace the mattress in the downstairs room. They use memory foam toppers, which outgas toxic chemicals, to cover up the fact that they need new mattresses. I thought this was very strange for a place that serves organic foods. I also didn’t like that fact that the room can not be made dark. When sun up is early, and I wake when the light in the room gets bright enough, I would have liked to be able to have slept later by closing curtains on the windows, but the curtains are not adequate and are too sheer to stop the light in the mornings. Same held true for when I wanted to take a mid-​day nap. Couldn’t make the room dark enough to actually fall asleep, even though it was grey and rainy out.
To use the sauna is an extra $ 5, and you have to wait awhile for it to heat up, as no one seems to use it. Maybe because they charge a fee for it? I never bothered with it.
The breakfast food Gail made was all good though. But I didn’t appreciate having to make my own coffee 2 of the 4 mornings. The first morning she made it for me. The second morning she left me note saying the pot was ready to go and she had shown me how to use it. But, the 3^rd morning, I had to scrounge around the kitchen to locate where to put the old grinds and used filter (the compost here which I’m happy about), find the clean filters, grind my own beans, etc. The same was true of the 4^th morning, though at least now I knew where everything was. But, I didn’t like running the grinder at 7 am so I made tea instead.
Finally, as far as B&Bs go, this isn’t the worst one I’ve been to, but I’ve paid less for much better accommodations. I think it’s only worth maybe half to ²⁄₃ of what they charge.