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 […]