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Give to Moritani Preserve, in the heart of our community

To say it’s been an exciting 12 months at Moritani would be an understatement. Thanks to your help, the Preserve In the Heart of Winslow has received so much extraordinary care and – it’s Valentine’s Day, so yes, we’ll say it – love!

Your support through the Parks & Trails Foundation funded intensive, weeklong work sessions by EarthCorps and Student Conservation Corps, who concentrated on restoring the park’s east boundary. These teams worked with Bainbridge Metro Parks to revive an area that not long ago was overrun by vines and invasives, but this spring will be newly abloom. Visit the park and see!

Some 350 volunteers of all ages turned out through the year, offering 400-plus person-hours of spirited work at the Preserve. Volunteers planted 90 hardy native shrubs and trees (funded with your support), established new “habitat piles” of fallen sticks for the forest’s littlest critters, and spread many, many yards […]

Give to Moritani Preserve, in the heart of our community2024-02-14T10:59:00-08:00

Sign up for Winter Work Parties

There’s a full slate of  winter work parties in Bainbridge Island parks and trails ahead. Sign up today!

Conservation Work Party

Where: Blakley Harbor Park, NE Country Club Road

When: Saturday, Feb. 10 and March 9 (2nd Saturdays), 10:00a-12:00p

What:  Join the Park District, IslandWood, and the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation every second Saturday this winter in the ongoing restoration of Blakley Harbor Park! Thousands of volunteer hours have already been logged, helping transform the site of the former largest mill in the world. Volunteers will help remove invasive species, spread mulch to discourage regrowth, and plant native species where invasives have been controlled.

Well suited for children ages six and up who are comfortable using small hand tools and walking off trail on uneven surfaces.

REGISTER HERE

Trails Work Party

Where: Fort Ward Park (Upper Parking Lot), Fort Ward Hill Road

When: Saturday, Jan. 20, Feb. 17, March 16 (3rd Saturdays), 10:00a-12:00p

What: Join the […]

Sign up for Winter Work Parties2024-02-07T10:57:50-08:00

Hyla, Madrona students do great work for parks

Here’s a great note to close out the year: great kids doing great work in great parks.

Students from Hyla School turned out in numbers in November and December, for stewardship projects at Moritani Preserve and Halls Hill Lookout & Labyrinth.

At Moritani, kids from both Hyla School and Winslow’s Madrona School – together about 70 strong, counting teachers and a few helpful neighbors – stepped in to round up storm debris and install more than 100 new plants, after high winds scrubbed a community work party the weekend prior.

Yarrow, ocean spray, spirea, tall Oregon grape, red elderberry, vine maple and Pacific wax myrtle and other Northwest natives went in along the preserve’s east boundary, the focus of intense restoration work for the past year or more.

The work identifying and installing native plants aligned with the Hyla life science curriculum and the students’ recent studies, teacher Shelby Mann said.

Madrona School too, while […]

Hyla, Madrona students do great work for parks2024-02-07T10:55:42-08:00

Sign up for a fall work party

Conservation Work Party

Where: Strawberry Hill Park, 7666 Highschool Road NE

When: Saturday, Oct. 14 (2nd Saturday), 10:00a-12:00p

What: Join the Park District, Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance, Gear Grinders, and the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation this fall, preparing the site of the future mountain bike park for new trails and features. Projects will include removing invasive species, building habitats, and planting native plants.

Well-suited for children ages six and up who are comfortable using small hand tools and walking off trail on uneven surfaces.

REGISTER HERE

Trails Work Party

Where: Gazzam Lake Nature Preserve

When: Saturday, Oct. 21 (3rd Saturday), 10:00a-12:00p

What: Join the Park District’s trails team, the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation at Gazzam Lake Nature Preserve this fall, maintaining trail surfacing, improving trail drainage, and closing social trails in sensitive wildlife habitat.

These work parties are well suited for children ages eight and up who are comfortable using some small hand tools and […]

Sign up for a fall work party2023-10-13T15:09:47-07:00

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, restoration2023-03-08T18:10:44-08:00

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 Preserve2022-10-25T11:28:03-07:00

Join the Moritani Preserve Advisory Committee

Bainbridge Metro Parks and the Bainbridge Island Parks Foundation are looking for new Friends of Moritani Committee members. This volunteer position allows you to be at the heart of helping plan and care for the stewardship of this beautiful place. Review the criteria and complete the survey today!

MORITANI ADVISORY COMMITTEE APPLICATION

Join the Moritani Preserve Advisory Committee2021-12-08T08:13:23-08:00

Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation

Mail:
PO Box 11127
Bainbridge Island, WA 98110
Office:
The Marge Williams Center,
221 Winslow Way West, Suite #104
Phone:
206.842.4971
Email:
info@biparksfoundation.org

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© Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation.
Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Tax ID# 91-1855049
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