Duwamish Alive! is an annual event held to bring awareness about the Duwamish River and its importance to the history and ecology of Seattle. It also provides a focus of energy, as all the different groups involved in the restoration of the Duwamish River sponsor events. This year there were more than 15 events, including a shoreline restoration ( Read more... )

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Two of the other forest stewards and I were planning 2014 (the planning was fun and we’re looking forward to the activities), and the question of plant diversity came up. How much had we increased native plant diversity in North Beach Park? We had a couple plant lists handy, and were quickly able to come up with a pretty good idea. Other than the ( Read more... )

The October work party for Friends of North Beach Park featured a number of employees from Nordstrom as part of their participation in Forterra NW’s Carbon Capturing Companies program. This allows Washington based companies to reduce their carbon footprint by helping to fund the planting of native conifers in parks and natural areas - such as North ( Read more... )

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Of value to people around the country is a blog and website called Ecosystem Gardening. There’s a lot of information there, including many book and online resources for specific areas.

Of interest to Seattlites are two workshops. One is next Wednesday (18th), 6:30-8 p.m. at the Center for Urban Horticulture: Wildlife Habitat Garden Design. The ( Read more... )

The other day, doing another stream survey, I got a sense of what an ivy forest might look like.

We’ve all seen ivy on the ground, where it “should” be - the roots are shallow, the vines thin. You can easily pull up great stretches of English Ivy. This can lead to what I call “ivy madness”, as you get wrapped up in pulling a root and it leads you ( Read more... )

This summer I have a number of questions to answer about the seeps in North Beach Park.

The best way to answer the questions about location, size, and number is by walking the stream from where it bubbles up from the ground to the end of the main park. Maybe this is just an excuse to explore the park in a way I haven’t yet, but I think that’s the ( Read more... )

This was done for ESRM 473, “Restoration of North American Biomes,” Winter 2013, Kern Ewing, professor. I was in Group 5.


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How To Naturescape

A thorough-looking guide to the how and whys of naturescaping, as opposed to landscaping. For one thing, using locally native plants increases the texture and ecological services of a landscape. As they point out, using the industrial plants of large commercial nurseries results in landscape looking the same around the country.

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