News Archives | Page 4 of 15 | Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation

Wildflowers coming to Battle Point, thanks to Montessori Country School

Wildflowers coming to Battle Point, thanks to Montessori Country School

As you see colorful wildflowers shooting up around Battle Point ballfields this summer, you have Montessori Country School to thank.

Montessori students recently spread hundreds of “seed bombs” near the ballfields – handmade balls of powdered clay, compost, wildflower seeds like Lupin and yarrow, and water. No planting required – just throw them around, and nature does the rest.

“They have all the things they need to germinate inside the ball,” says Morgan Houk of the Park District. “They ‘explode’ out into wildflowers.”

The flowers will add color and healthy pollinator habitat to the park.

Montessori Country School is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and wanted to involve students in a community service project for that milestone, says Dorothy Mak Thompson, communications and development manager for the school.

“Our students enjoy Battle Point park regularly, often on Fridays for outdoor education, so we are excited to collaborate with the Park District on this project,” […]

Wildflowers coming to Battle Point, thanks to Montessori Country SchoolDouglas2023-05-25T11:32:53-07:00

Smart new bike racks at Halls Hill Lookout

Smart new bike racks at Halls Hill Lookout

Here’s a good reason to ride your bike to Halls Hill Lookout & Labyrinth this weekend. Two reasons, actually: a pair of custom bike racks to hitch your ride to once you’re there.

The bike racks – in the shape of the Parks & Trails Foundation’s “leaf” icon – were designed and crafted by Rory’s Custom Fabrication of Bainbridge Island.

The racks were installed by a team from Fairbank Construction, with help from Bainbridge High School interns Aidan Lee, Jasper Witten Carr and Finn Wenker.

The team poured concrete footings in mid-April, and Fairbank’s Phil Ohmes completed the installation this week once the footings were cured.

“Everyone coming by is digging them,” Ohmes says.

The internship gives the student first-hand exposure to “the trades,” construction and related industries that Ohmes says face a major shortage of workers. Fairbank’s Abigail Zelen says the benefit goes both ways.

“We get exposure by working with them and learning how […]

Smart new bike racks at Halls Hill LookoutDouglas2023-05-02T08:26:16-07:00

The heart and soul of Bainbridge Island parks

The heart and soul of Bainbridge Island parks

Perry Barrett and Bainbridge Island found each other at just the right moment.

It was 1994, and islanders were not too long removed from saving the first 240 acres of the Grand Forest from development, and were turning their eyes toward Gazzam Lake. Preservation was in the air. Barrett, meanwhile, joined the Bainbridge Island Park and Recreation District (the “Metro” would come later) as a planner with a background in open space and trails.

It was a timely match.

“The community had this shared vision that ‘if you don’t buy it now, it’ll go away as an opportunity,’” Barrett recalls. “That was very much true, and even more true today than even the most far-sighted people could see.”

Over the next 29 years, Barrett would play a quiet but essential role in expanding a modest park system into the treasure that islanders know and enjoy today.

Working from a hopelessly cluttered nook in the Park […]

The heart and soul of Bainbridge Island parksDouglas2023-04-20T13:35:56-07:00

Goats munch their way through the weeds at Blakely Harbor

Goats munch their way through the weeds at Blakely Harbor

What’s the cutest way to get rid of some really baaaaaaaaaad weeds? Goats!

Goats visited Blakely Harbor Park this past week, charming islanders while clearing invasive blackberry, ivy and more. Thanks to a grant from the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation, Tammy Dunakin and her nearly 100 goats helped in the continued restoration of Blakely Harbor Park, once the site of the largest mill in the world.

Blakely Harbor Park is no stranger to goats. In 2018, a large herd visited to clear blackberry and other invasive weeds from areas of the park that are now replanted with thriving native vegetation. However, the work isn’t done yet. Thanks to Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation funding, the goats were able to return, working through a dense patch of over an acre of blackberry and ivy off Country Club Road.

Once above-ground vegetation is cleared, the Park District’s Student Conservation Corps, volunteers, and contractors, […]

Goats munch their way through the weeds at Blakely HarborDouglas2023-04-20T13:54:41-07:00

Celebrate Earth Month all month in April

Celebrate Earth Month all month in April

April is Celebrate Trees! Earth Month Bainbridge Island

April is Earth Month on Bainbridge Island! Celebrating with activities and events for all ages for Earth Day and Arbor Day during the entire month of April and beyond. Everyone can take action and join activities to support, celebrate, and learn more about our environment and beautiful planet Earth.

Sustainable Bainbridge, in partnership with the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation and many other Bainbridge Island nonprofits, is hosting an incredible variety of opportunities, including weed pulls and work parties, Earth Day celebrations, nature talks, free invasive weed disposal, and nature walks. Take action every day as an individual, a family, or a group.

Tell us about your month. Take pictures and share your Earth Month actions and projects with us. Use the hashtag #EarthMonthBI when posting on social media for Earth Month on Bainbridge Island. Join us in celebrating with activities and events for […]

Celebrate Earth Month all month in AprilDouglas2023-03-22T18:06:13-07:00

In the news: Funding Request Would Plan 200-Mile Trail Connection

In the news: Funding Request Would Plan 200-Mile Trail Connection

From The Urbanist, 3.10.2023

An impressively long list of governments on the Kitsap and Olympic peninsulas have joined together to jointly request funding to finish a 200-mile biking and walking trail that will connect the Pacific Ocean to Puget Sound. The request for funds from the U.S. Department of Transportation will close around 100 miles of gaps in regional trails that, if completed, would allow uninterrupted cycling and hiking from the Bainbridge Island ferry terminal all the way to the beach in La Push.

The request, submitted as part of the Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) grant program, has the city of Port Angeles as its lead applicant, with five other cities, three counties, the Port of Port Townsend, the Quileute and Suquamish tribes, and the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) joining in the request to receive funding.

Filling the gaps would unite […]

In the news: Funding Request Would Plan 200-Mile Trail ConnectionDouglas2023-06-13T16:38:46-07:00

Madeline Ostrander brings climate change home

Madeline Ostrander brings climate change home

If you’re feeling a little down watching the world you grew up with evanesce around you – forests burning here, glaciers melting there, our once reliably gorgeous Northwest summers now blighted by heat and smoke – there’s a word for that: solastalgia.

The term describes a sense of loss or homesickness, as Madeline Ostrander has it, “from watching one’s environment unravel.”

So, you’re not alone. The question is, how you respond.

“I think in this part of the world, where people are experiencing wildfires, there is a sense of unease about what is this place we’re living in now, and what is it becoming,” says Ostrander, science journalist and author of “At Home on an Unruly Planet: Finding Refuge on a Changed Earth” (2022). “Some people feel it in a way that is very front of mind and they can talk […]

Madeline Ostrander brings climate change homeDouglas2023-03-10T15:27:56-08:00

New Puget Sound to Pacific Collaborative plans for 200-mile trail corridor

New Puget Sound to Pacific Collaborative plans for 200-mile trail corridor

The Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation is one of three organizations in the new Puget Sound to Pacific Collaborative, bringing communities together to plan and build a 200-mile multi-use trail from the ferry docks on Bainbridge Island, Kingston and Port Townsend to the Pacific Coast at La Push.

The PS2P Collaborative also includes the North Kitsap Trails Association, and the Peninsula Trails Coalition.

The Puget Sound to Pacific (PS2P) trail network would be bookended by the Olympic Discovery Trail and the Sound to Olympics Trail, linking communities and local connecting trails along the route.

Far more than a recreational trail, PS2P would be the spine of an “active transportation” corridor and greenway that shifts short commutes away from automobiles to human-scaled and people-powered travel modes like walking and bicycling. It aligns with transportation and climate goals and policies at every level of state and local government.

“One hundred miles are already complete, after 35 years of hard work by […]

New Puget Sound to Pacific Collaborative plans for 200-mile trail corridorDouglas2023-06-13T16:55:55-07:00

Moritani Preserve a model for conservation, restoration

Moritani Preserve a model for conservation, restoration

For a forester, a walk in the woods is never just that.

When she first stepped into Moritani Preserve, Malloree Weinheimer – atypical of her profession, perhaps, with a background in art history – could see the cascading layers of meaning that overlay the land: ancestral home to the island’s indigenous peoples; the vestiges of commercial berry production, when Japanese and Filipino farmers cleared the property and worked the soil; to over-dense stands of Douglas firs planted 50 or 60 years ago, presciently, to buffer against creeping suburbia.

And the poor health today of those same trees: hundreds of “lollipops” with skinny trunks, withered branches and mere tufts of green at the top. The trees may look pretty to the untrained eye, but the picture of forest vitality, Moritani Preserve is not. Yet.

“It’s overstocked and looks like a (tree) plantation on the north part,” […]

Moritani Preserve a model for conservation, restorationDouglas2023-03-08T18:10:44-08:00

New Kubota builds its first trail at Shel Chelb

New Kubota builds its first trail at Shel Chelb

The Park District’s new Kubota tractor made its trail-building debut this week, rolled out to construct a 100-foot path at Shel Chelb Park.

The Kubota was funded in part by a $25,000 grant from the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation, to both speed and ease trail construction projects that have largely relied on big crews and hand labor. The early reports: a grant well spent.

“You could just have one person basically build the whole trail,” says Sean Smith Sell, Trails Program manager for the Park District, between stints at the Kubota controls. “You can do anything – clear brush, grade the trail, dig out whatever you need to out of the trail, fill in the low spots, take down the high spots. You might need someone to bring gravel.”

The new trail followed this script, the two-person Park District crew clearing the way through a […]

New Kubota builds its first trail at Shel ChelbDouglas2023-02-16T12:42:48-08:00