Green Seattle Day
Green Seattle Day is an annual city-wide day of service organized by the Green Seattle Partnership. Last Saturday, we at Nature Consortium hosted one of the 16 Green Seattle Day restoration sites. It was a great event!
We started off the day digging up blackberry and thistle that had grown back after the initial removal, then moved on to planting. We worked in two areas on the edge of the forest and grassland habitats. Edge habitats typically have the most biodiversity, so we focused our attention here.
Here’s an interesting idea from Buphalo: We tried a new way of planting the salal today in hopes that it would increase their survival rate. About half of the salal we planted last year in this area didn’t survive the transplant, so this time we made sure not to disturb the roots before planting. When we finished there, we headed over to the wetland to plant native berries and water-loving plants.
It was a wet and windy day out in the greenbelt – our tents blew away after the first few volunteers arrived! The weather bounced between calm and heavy downpour for the first two hours, and then cleared up towards the afternoon. We were all wet and fairly cold by the end, but we pushed through to get 211 plants into the ground. Thanks to everyone who came out!
Also, we realize there was some confusion about the date & time of Green Seattle Day. Seattle University listed the work party as being tomorrow (11/11) instead of last Saturday. We weren’t planning on a work party tomorrow, but we’ve decided to throw a special work party just for them! As always, everyone is welcome.