Earth Month 2024: Energetic kindergarteners, new sites, and lots of volunteers!
Earth Month is always a whirlwind here at Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association (DNDA), and April 2024 was no exception.
DNDA’s Nature team hosted 16 community events in April and worked with more than 300 community and student volunteers — our largest numbers since 2015.
We have written elsewhere about hosting our first-ever volunteer event at our new site in the Duwamish Head Greenbelt, but this was not the only highlight. We worked at numerous sites during the month, including hosting volunteers at our headline event for Spring Duwamish Alive! at Pigeon Point Park, returning to Croft Forest at DNDA’s Croft Place Townhomes affordable housing property, and working with perhaps our most productive group of kindergarteners in history at DNDA’s Delridge Wetland Park.
Kindergarteners from Louisa Boren STEM K-8 school move buckets of wood chip mulch at our restoration site at Delridge Wetland Park.
We partnered with all three kindergarten classes from Louisa Boren STEM K-8 school — a total of 46 kids — continuing an annual tradition and partnership that blossomed in 2018. Over the years, these students have moved buckets and buckets of wood chip mulch at our sites in the Longfellow Creek Watershed, helping encourage native plant growth and suppress weeds.
The kids also got to partake in EcoArts activities led by DNDA Arts Program Manager Erin Kollar and local teaching artist Asha Helmstetter. They created nature sculptures using found environmental materials and air-drying clay.
Students volunteer to share details about their EcoArts project during an activity led by DNDA’s Art team.
We also partnered with our Art team to lead a guided walk at their Spring Nature Camp, which involved a tour of our restoration projects and some appreciation of native plants, such as Pacific bleeding heart. You can learn more about DNDA’s EcoArts Spring Nature Camp in our past blog post.
Youth explore restoration sites at Camp Long during DNDA’s Spring Nature Camp.
By the end of the month, our team and volunteers initiated restoration of 2,500 new square feet of forest, continued ongoing work in another 25,600 square feet, and mulched nearly 3,000 square feet.
We are thrilled with the collaboration of everyone in the Delridge community and excited to see the progress in our forests for years to come! If you would like to join our Nature team at an upcoming volunteer event, we host them all year long! Check out the calendar and sign up at dnda.org/nature.
— Written by DNDA Restoration Program Manager Ben Antonius