Thanks to Buckshot String Band and all who made the Moritani Community Picnic such a great Labor Day afternoon. We’ll see you next year! SUPPORT MORITANI PRESERVE STEWARDSHIP
2021 Moritani Community Picnic
The Park District has launched a new Conservation Work Parties series, tackling the creeping scourge of ivy and other invasive species.
Second Saturdays monthly, volunteers will visit a different park and bring down nuisance vines, uproot Scotch broom, and perform other ecological restoration.
The conservation events are being held in partnership with Weed Warriors, a longstanding advocacy and action group that brings expertise on spurge laurel and other lesser-known problem weeds.
“People are coming because they’re interested in learning more, and applying it to their own properties,” the Park District’s Morgan Houk says. “It’s a learning opportunity as much as a ‘get out and know your parks and volunteer’ opportunity.”
Conservation Work Parties mark a welcome return — and expansion — of volunteer activity in island parks, after a year lost to the pandemic.
The district’s popular monthly Trails Work Parties are […]
Where the wildflowers grow, the butterflies go.
Visitors to Moritani Preserve should see plenty of both this summer, as the preserve’s first-ever pollinator garden sprouts up in the north meadow.
Volunteers from Friends of Moritani Preserve have seeded the new garden with a colorful mix of wildflowers, mostly perennials with a few annuals tossed in, from Pro Time Lawn Seed Co. of Portland, Ore. A few Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia fulgida) starts were added to jump-start the garden.
As the garden flowers, butterflies, bees and other pollinators are attracted to the nectar the flowers provide. In the process of feeding, they transfer pollen from flower to flower.
“Pollinators are extremely important, and one of the hidden things most people probably don’t notice is, every plant and tree and shrub has its specific pollinators to help with seed production,” Friends of Moritani Preserve chair Maryann Kirkby says. “The more diversity we can put into the preserve to […]
Good for the butterflies, good for the bees.
A pollinator garden is coming to Moritani Preserve this spring, bringing bright flowers attractive to the busy bees (and butterflies, bats and some birds, even) that propagate plants by spreading pollen across the countryside as they feed on flower nectar.
Visitors will see several days of work near Moritani’s north trail entrance, where a contractor will remove field grass roots and replace with planting soil. The area will be seeded with flower varieties including lupine, coneflower, blanketflower and wallflower.
The pollinator garden will look like bare earth as the flowers fill in, and will be signed asking visitors to stay clear. More pollinator gardens may be added around the Moritani meadows in the future.
The pollinators project is a partnership of the Bainbridge Island Parks Foundation, Bainbridge Metro Parks, and the Friends of Moritani Preserve.
Why pollinators? Says the National Park Service:
Because […]
Barb Trafton, Executive Director of the Bainbridge Island Parks Foundation, leads a group of inspired experts to discuss the new management plan for the Moritani Preserve in this episode of What’s Up Bainbridge.
Maryann Kirkby, landscape designer and chair of the Friends of Moritani Preserve, Malloree Weinheimer, CEO of Chickadee Forestry, and Jay Kinney, Bainbridge Island Metro Park and Recreation District commissioner, discuss the Moritani Preserve “pocket forest,” including its history and goals of the new management plan and community engagement, supporting a climate-resilient forest in this beloved Winslow open-space.
This podcast is part of the community conversation for the Associated Bainbridge Communities 2021 Environmental Conference: The Future of Our Forests, Bainbridge island and the Climate Crisis, Sundays in March.
Podcast credits: BCB host, Barb Trafton; audio editor, Keith Doughty; and publisher, Bob Ross. Register for the Environmental Conference
