Power Hour with University Prep!

Last fall we had all of the seventh graders from University Prep out to do some blackberry removal, and they enjoyed it so much they came back with the whole school! Around 200 students and faculty came out for about an hour and a half and they dug up almost 10,000 sq.ft. of blackberry root balls! They also cut and raked another 3500 sq.ft. of blackberry canes. The week before the event, our SYEP crew and regular weekday volunteers worked hard to prepare the area for the shovel-wielding army of youth. We cut and raked our way through a huge and inaccessible area filled with blackberries and trash, and we left all the root balls for the big event.




The area near Riverview playfield was muddy in places, but the rain held out just long enough for buphalo to give a quick introduction to our restoration project and a safety talk about tool usage, and for Uni Prep to spend an hour digging up hundreds of root balls and yelling, "Death to blackberry!" Ben Smith toured around the site with his clarinet and led the youth out of the field at the end of their time with us. He continued serenading us while we sorted the tools with our SYEP crew, with a brief pause for buphalo to lead a thank you speech and a giant group pat on the back.

Good golly, check out 12th & Holly!

We have been incredibly busy in the Greenbelt, especially over on SW Holly St. between 12th Ave. and 14th Ave. We currently have a full-time crew of folks from Seattle Youth Employment Program working with us, and they have been blazing through the Himalayan blackberry at the corner of 12th and Holly. So far they have cleared over 12,000 sq.ft. of blackberry in the area! They have also put hundreds of plants in the ground as the end of the planting season approaches with the warm, dry, spring weather (sunny and in the high 50s all week!). Perhaps you have noticed the color appearing in the Greenbelt as the cherry trees blossom and early risers like Indian plum wake up from a sleepy winter.

If you have taken a stroll down Holly St. in the past week or so, you will have noticed all the new shrubs we've put in the ground in an effort to have more plant density and to discourage people from using our restoration site as a dumping ground or a dirt bike track. I know it's a hard to wish for rain when it's gorgeous out, but these little plants could sure use it. Several neighbors have noticed our hard work and have approached us with questions and compliments. I know that some people will miss the blackberries in the summer, but soon there will be thimbleberries to feast on and a diversity of (thornless) plants to enjoy! And I know all of the other creatures in the Greenbelt will appreciate our efforts as we restore their habitat. If you see us working, please come and say hi and meet our crew! Better yet, come join us between 8am and 4pm on nearly any weekday (go to www.naturec.org/restoration.htm for exact dates), or on Saturdays from 10am to 2pm!

MLK Weekend of Service!

This year we decided to honor the MLK holiday with an entire weekend of service projects in order to make having "a day on, not a day off" more accessible to everyone. We had three amazing days filled with perfect weather (nearly 60 degrees on MLK Day!), great attitudes, and hard working volunteers. Over the weekend, 208 volunteers put in 777.25 hours of service!

Saturday was our largest planting day of the weekend with 453 wetland plants put in the ground, most of them sedges and rushes, but with some piggyback and fringe cup in the mix as well. On Sunday we worked at the Highland Park Way entrance to the Soundway property and we freed 25 trees from ivy and planted 108 more plants.

Monday, MLK Day proper, was a huge success with groups coming out from the Univesrity of Washington, YMCA Earth Service Corps, local high schools, and we had the help of several AmeriCorps VISTA members. We cleared a massive area up at Pigeon Point Park and we planted 300 rushes!




Over the weekend we completed 43,500 sq.ft. of maintenance and 19,000 sq.ft. of initial removal (blackberry and Scot's broom)! Ben Smith and his trusty clarinet joined us Saturday and Sunday, and super volunteer Tess Morgan sang us some lovely tunes on Saturday and Monday. Amy Denio (clarinet) and Jim Knodle (trumpet) also roamed around Pigeon Point on Monday and serenaded our volunteers while they worked.


“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Healthy forests benefit everyone! Thank you all for honoring Dr. King's spirit and President Obama's call for service this year!

Free the trees!

"What's so bad about English ivy?" This is a fairly common question asked by newcomers to the Greenbelt, and the answer is usually preceded by a very deep breath because the list of what's bad about English ivy is so long.
As the name may lead you to believe, English ivy is not native to the United States and it has no natural predators here to keep it in check. In my opinion, the worst thing about ivy is that it out-competes native plants and creates what has been referred to as an "ivy desert," which is another way of saying monoculture. Healthy forests have many layers- a canopy of tall trees, understory plants of various heights, ground cover, etc. Many of the forests in the Seattle area, the West Duwamish Greenbelt included, have only a few layers- a canopy of deciduous trees that are approaching the end of their life span, and various invasive plant species that are preventing native plants from taking root. Imagine, then, what our forests could look like in the next couple of decades as those deciduous trees die off- it's a far cry from the towering conifer forests that populated this area prior to the logging that occurred throughout the 20th century. Luckily, there are several organizations working to ensure that we have healthy forests for generations beyond our own, and Nature Consortium's restoration team is out at least three days a week doing our part with the help ofsome really amazing volunteers! Check out the pictures of the survival rings they did last week! For more information on how and why we do survival rings, click here.

Perhaps you are wondering what else is on the list of reasons why English ivy is so bad. Two things that come to mind are falling trees and rats. Ivy not only grows in mats on the forest floor, it also climbs up trees and effectively acts as a sail by catching the wind in its many leaves and often brings old trees crashing down. Also, while native plants can serve as habitat for a variety of different animal species, thick masses of English ivy tend to be popular nesting places for rats. If these reasons are not enough to convince you that ivy is evil, come to one of our work parties and I will tell you more! Also check out this recent article about holly and ivy in Northwest forests- buphalo and Arthur were interviewed about the work we do!

12/5/09 Morning frost and the physics of leverage

If you think it's hard to distinguish the native trailing blackberry from the invasive Himalayan blackberry, imagine them both covered in a layer of frost on a cold, bright morning. Luckily, we were working in a slow-growing patch of sun up at Pigeon Point Park and the frost melted away pretty quickly. We have been doing a lot of maintenance up at this site lately, and we spent the morning tending to an area that hadn't received any love in a few months. Volunteers warmed themselves by pulling out blackberry that was coming up and threatening plants we put in the ground last year. When I say pulling, I mean it literally because we tried to limit our tool usage so as not to disturb the mulch too much. Mulch acts as a barrier between the nutrient rich soil it is covering and invasive seeds looking for a place to plant themselves. As with any barrier, mulch becomes much less effective when it has a bunch of holes in it, so we yanked the blackberry up by hand. This may sound ridiculous, but I promise that there is a way to do this without getting poked too badly by thorns- come out with us and I'll show you!



After we cleared that area of blackberry, we took a break and then gathered the weed wrenches and headed to a big patch of Scot's broom and apple rootstock. Davis, a good friend of buphalo's, played us sweet songs on the guitar and we cleared 1,070 sq.ft. of the two invasive shrubs. The weed wrench won at least a few votes for favorite tool, if you have ever used one you know why. If you haven't ever used one, there are still some pretty big Scot's broom waiting to be wrenched out up at Pigeon Point!

Volunteer of the Month- Arthur Larson!

If you have been out to the Greenbelt with us on a weekday during the past couple of months, you have probably worked alongside Arthur, rain or shine. One fateful day at the beginning of October, Arthur came across the Nature Consortium website while looking for urban forest restoration opportunities in his neighborhood of West Seattle. He then e-mailed volunteer@naturec.org with a short message reading “Hi, I can volunteer in the forest tomorrow, Oct. 6th. Where do we meet?” And so began a wonderful relationship between Arthur and the West Duwamish Greenbelt. Nearly every Tuesday and Thursday since, Arthur has come out to work with us, and as the Husky football season winds down we expect to see him on Saturdays as well! However, Arthur did mention that he appreciates the intimacy of the (usually) smaller weekday work parties, but he’s excited to see the performing artists that come out to Saturday events.






Arthur’s love of the forest comes from a lifelong interest in backpacking, hiking, and nature in general. Since his retirement, working with Nature Consortium has been Arthur’s first opportunity to work in an urban forest and to perform service that he feels makes the community better. Also, he enjoys working outside, getting exercise, meeting new people, and he thinks there is something “perversely satisfying about pulling out blackberry.” When asked which of our sites he likes the best (he’s been to them all, several times over!), Arthur said he likes Pigeon Point because of the park’s openness. “You don’t get a chance to plant a whole forest very often,” Arthur said, “It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity.” Well put, Arthur, and thanks for all of your dedication and hard work!

11-14-09 Party in the Park!

This morning we discovered the power of positive thinking as everyone on Nature Consortium staff (and I suspect many of our work party participants) had spent the week hoping for a rain-free event. If you have been out to work with us before, perhaps you have heard buphalo say, “There is no bad weather, only different types of good weather.” Normally I agree with that sentiment, but several of our 167 volunteers were knee-high to a grasshopper, and we didn’t want them floating away.

Thankfully, the weather was gorgeous (if not a little brisk), but you warm up quickly when you are planting trees and shrubs, removing invasive plants, and hauling mulch back and forth. We had musicians out for most of the day, including Brian Kent on saxophone, James Lucal on the fiddle, Ben Smith playing the clarinet, and the Boys of Greenwood Glen serenading us at lunchtime with their sweet bluegrass/Celtic tunes. Monica, another Nature Consortium staff member, also led an arts activity for some of the younger kids to partake in when they weren’t wielding little shovels.

We had 146 wonderful participants from University Child Development School (UCDS), as well as 21 amazing volunteers from St. Andrews Presbyterian Church and several local colleges. Throughout the course of the day, 365 potted plants- mostly understory plants like salal and deer fern- and over 50 live stakes were put in the ground. Live staking is the process of harvesting branches from larger plants and sticking them in the ground to grow new plants. This may sound unbelievable, and it only works with certain plant species, but live staking can be a really effective (and cheap!) way to reintroduce native vegetation to an area. We planted salmonberry, thimbleberry, and red-osier dogwood by digging a small hole with rebar and sticking two-thirds of the stake in the ground.














At the end of the day, we also had a bunch of potted plants in the ground thanks to all the youngsters and their families! After a morning introduction from buphalo, UCDS had their own team captains lead planting demonstrations and they did a great job! To end the day, we had the king of all bucket brigades as volunteers moved a gigantic mountain of mulch to help keep invasive plants from taking root again. It looks great out at Soundway everyone, thank you so much! And a special thanks to our board members who came out and got dirty with us, it was great to have your help and your presence!