Environment Archives | Page 3 of 7 | Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation

MLK Day makes welcome return to Blakely

MLK Day makes welcome return to Blakely

About 175 volunteers made it “a day on, not a day off,” as MLK Day of Service returned to Blakely Harbor Park after a three-year Covid layoff.

Effort was concentrated around the park’s south boundary near Country Club Road. Volunteers uprooted swaths of ivy that had taken hold since the last big restoration event and replanted Northwest natives.

“It needs a lot of love,” Lydia Roush, Natural Resources Manager for Bainbridge Metro Parks, said of the park’s southwest quadrant. “It’s the same methodology that continues to ring true. You pull ‘em out, you come back and monitor and continue to pull, and eventually they’re eradicated.

“We fill in with as much native vegetation as we can to help shade out and keep invasives from taking hold. Volunteers are really critical in helping us achieve our goals.”

Northwest natives introduced included yarrow (Achillea […]

MLK Day makes welcome return to BlakelyDouglas2023-02-01T09:25:00-08:00

City staff, BI Rowing team up for Waterfront Park restoration

City staff, BI Rowing team up for Waterfront Park restoration

Thanks to staffers from Bainbridge Island City Hall for giving their time at a Waterfront Park environmental restoration event last week.

COBI staffers volunteered under their Wellness program alongside volunteers from Bainbridge Island Rowing. The group planted new Western red cedars, sword ferns and native strawberry along the sidewalk at the park’s east end.

It was the second in a series of Waterfront Park restoration events co-sponsored by the City and the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation.

The ongoing project targets an area of the park blighted by invasive ivy and holly. An April event saw City staffers and other volunteers clear trees of vines, uproot invasive groundcover, and grub out several truckloads of holly and blackberry.

The native replanting fulfills new requirements for restoration in shoreline zones. New plants were funded by the City.

The restoration area is bounded to the […]

City staff, BI Rowing team up for Waterfront Park restorationDouglas2022-12-16T11:07:48-08:00

X-Country, Bainbridge Island Ultimate dig in, dig out at Strawberry Hill

X-Country, Bainbridge Island Ultimate dig in, dig out at Strawberry Hill

A happily common sight of late: youth volunteers pitching in to restore the 10-acre addition at Strawberry Hill Park, future site of the Strawberry Hill Bike Park. Latest to lend their energy and talents are Bainbridge Island Cross-Country. The club harriers rooted out ivy and holly, supporting a healthy forests initiative by Bainbridge Metro Parks.

BI Ultimate also joined the list of local clubs who’ve been putting in volunteer hours at the Strawberry Hill Bike Park site through the Parks & Trails Foundation’s ParksCorps program. The club earned funds for their activities by doing two hours of invasive removal, restoring the land and forest.

Great job, Bainbridge Island Cross-Country and Bainbridge Island Ultimate!

Learn more about ParksCorps here.

X-Country, Bainbridge Island Ultimate dig in, dig out at Strawberry HillDouglas2022-11-23T14:49:21-08:00

Island Coop Preschool stewards Exclusion Memorial

Island Coop Preschool stewards Exclusion Memorial

Thanks to Island Cooperative Preschool for helping put in new native plants at the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial at Pritchard Park.

Youngsters (with a little help from parents, teachers and community volunteers) installed more than 150 sword ferns, salal, nootka roses, Oregon grape and salmonberry around the memorial site, and spread mulch over the newly planted beds.

Ellen Carleson, Island Cooperative Preschool teacher and director, said the school wants its children to know that even as youngsters, they can make important things happen for the environment.

“In teaching environmental education, we so often want to jump into problem-solving the crises of the world,” Carleson said. “What the studies have found is, with young children, you just have to have them fall in love with the earth and care about the earth. Once they are in love with the earth and care about […]

Island Coop Preschool stewards Exclusion MemorialDouglas2022-11-23T08:19:32-08:00

Century-old oak comes into the light at Moritani Preserve

Century-old oak comes into the light at Moritani Preserve

Moritani Preserve’s newest natural wonder isn’t so new – 100 years by some estimates, and that’s probably on the low end. Stately, leafy, sprawling across the open blue sky, yet always hidden just beyond plain sight.

You can call it Garry. Maybe.

“Look at this oak, isn’t it magnificent?” muses Lydia Roush, natural resource manager for Bainbridge Metro Parks. “It’s much more aesthetic to walk through here and see this huge, majestic and very old oak. The horse chestnuts were growing into it and shading it out. We’re hoping now that it’s got more sun and more space, it’ll perk back up and shoot out some new limbs in the spring.”

The century-old oak came to light this past week as the Park District felled a clump of giant chestnut trees that had through the years grown up in front but found themselves on the […]

Century-old oak comes into the light at Moritani PreserveDouglas2022-10-25T11:28:03-07:00

Restoring a forest at Strawberry Hill

Restoring a forest at Strawberry Hill

Trees this tall shouldn’t be this thin.

Bundled like pencils they stand, ring upon ring of bare, withered branches scaling their skinny trunks toward tiny puffs of green canopy aloft. In a Pacific Northwest defined by majestic forests of Douglas fir, the trees on the new Strawberry Hill Park addition have never quite made the grade. Now the challenge is helping the best ones move forward.

“It should not be this heavily stocked for this size of tree,” says Lydia Roush, natural resources manager for Bainbridge Metro Parks, scanning the rolling stands of troubled firs along park’s west edge. “It’s kind of a miracle more trees haven’t come down, or they’re not in even worse shape.”

The 10-acre parcel reflects the shifting uses of the island landscape, its natural and cultural history. Ancient forests were cleared for timber and, here, agriculture. Several generations of berry […]

Restoring a forest at Strawberry HillDouglas2022-11-23T11:57:39-08:00

Bainbridge Beach Cleanup is Sept. 10

Bainbridge Beach Cleanup is Sept. 10

Seeking volunteers to help with the annual Bainbridge Island Beach Cleanup on Saturday, Sept. 10, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.! This annual stewardship event is held in collaboration with Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup .

Sustainable Bainbridge, in partnership with many other Bainbridge Island nonprofits, is organizing this event to help clean our 53 miles of shoreline. We can all make a difference for our environment and our wildlife!

Everyone can get involved, whether it is supporting a team by entering data in the Ocean Conservancy CleanSwell app or picking up garbage along our shores and waterways–and even along our roadsides.

Sign up at https://www.sustainablebainbridge.org/event/beach-cleanup/

Take pictures and share your unusual debris and finds with us! Use the hashtag #bibeachcleanup when posting on […]

Bainbridge Beach Cleanup is Sept. 10Douglas2022-08-19T21:08:28-07:00

Park Stewards program looks for next-level volunteers

Park Stewards program looks for next-level volunteers

Everybody has a favorite park – that one with great features, a special memory attached, or just the one down the street.

For Pete Jones, it’s the park right next door.

A resident of the historic Victorian Lane condominiums – built around 1910, as officers quarters for a then-remote Coast Artillery Corps post at “Bean Point” – Jones has only to step outside, cross a green threshold and lose himself in the 137 acres of Fort Ward Park.

“One of the reasons we moved in was because of the park,” says Jones, who relocated to the island from California’s Carmel Valley three years ago. “I’ve been hiking in this park since day one, almost every single day.”

No surprise that Fort Ward Park is Jones’ “absolute” pick as a founding volunteer with Park Stewards, a new program of the Bainbridge Island Metro Park & […]

Park Stewards program looks for next-level volunteersDouglas2022-06-21T16:05:47-07:00

Thanks to Windermere for Hilltop broom pull

Thanks to Windermere for Hilltop broom pull

It wasn’t so long ago that the Scotch broom at Hilltop meadow grew this tall. Use your imagination to picture just how tall this is, and it was taller than that.

Restoration of the 5-acre meadow, bridging Grand Forest east and west, has been an ongoing challenge since it was preserved a decade ago. Keeping the noxious broom at bay is central to that effort.

“The restoration is rather fresh, in ecological terms,” says Morgan Houk, volunteer coordinator for Bainbridge Metro Parks.

Windermere’s Bainbridge Island office took up the cause this month, through the ParksCorps program of the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation.

Nine Windermere agents put in a morning of service at the Hilltop meadow’s west edge, combing the tall grass to root out Scotch broom starts before they can flower and […]

Thanks to Windermere for Hilltop broom pullDouglas2022-06-21T12:50:42-07:00

Leafline Trails Coalition launches 900-mile trail vision

Leafline Trails Coalition launches 900-mile trail vision

Gov. Jay Inslee pedaled the Sound to Olympics Trail on Bainbridge Island, as Leafline Trails Coalition today launched a visionary network with more than 900 miles of trails to safely and efficiently connect communities throughout the central Puget Sound region.

“Nobody’s ever caught frowning on a trail,” Inslee said as he live-streamed his ride up the STO from Winslow Way to High School Road, via a handlebar-mounted camera. “Everybody’s happy, ever notice that? People on trails are always smiling.”

Inslee live-streamed brief comments from the STO trailhead, hailing the regional trails plan as the most exciting mapping project since Peter Puget surveyed Puget Sound in 1792.

There are about 500 miles of trails today in King, Kitsap, Pierce, and Snohomish counties, Leafline says, but there has never before been a concerted effort to create a network that crosses jurisdictional boundaries and Puget Sound.

Currently, 56 percent of the more than 900-mile trail network is […]

Leafline Trails Coalition launches 900-mile trail visionDouglas2022-06-01T14:52:35-07:00