Stewardship Archives | Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation

Day of Remembrance was one to remember

Day of Remembrance was one to remember

The Day of Remembrance was one to remember.

The annual stewardship event brought more than 100 volunteers from the island, Seattle and beyond to tidy up the grounds of the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial at Pritchard Park. It marked the 82-year anniversary of federal Executive Order 9066, which on Feb. 19, 1942, authorized the wartime incarceration of citizens of Japanese ancestry.

The stewardship event – a prelude to the March 30 Exclusion Day observance – was hosted by the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial Association, and co-sponsored by the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation and Bainbridge Island Metro Park & Recreation District.

Ellen Sato Faust, BIJAEMA executive director, thanked all for their participation.

“Young and old, rain or shine, volunteers play a crucial role in furthering our mission and ensuring that the stories and experience of those affected by the […]

Day of Remembrance was one to rememberDouglas2024-02-23T08:39:47-08:00

Thanks for an inspiring MLK event Blakely Harbor

Thanks for an inspiring MLK event Blakely Harbor

Tremendous thanks to all who made MLK Day of Service at Blakely Harbor Park a grand success!

Much mulch was spread, many nasty weeds tugged out of the frozen ground as together we made it a wholesome and spirited Day On, not a Day Off for volunteer service and park stewardship.

Who turned out? Tim Burke and son Beckham:

“We live up the street and use this park all the time, so we wanted to give a little bit of our time to help out the park that we frequent,” Tim Burke said. “Our family runs here, we play on the beach, we swim in the water. It’s a special place.”

And Liz Springer:

“It’s one of my New Year’s resolutions, to volunteer in parks more, because I use the trails,” she said. “And I really hate invasives. I have them in my […]

Thanks for an inspiring MLK event Blakely HarborDouglas2024-01-25T16:59:58-08:00

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

Great work for parks & trails in our 2021 Annual Report

Great work for parks & trails in our 2021 Annual Report

It’s all about positive impacts.

Read the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation’s 2021 Annual Report, out now. From KidsUp! Playground to the STO Sakai Connector, Blakely Harbor Park restoration to a $1 million donation to expand Strawberry Hill Park, together we did great things for our parks and trails.

We’re grateful for the swelling ranks of generous donors and volunteers who make all of our accomplishments possible. Thank you!

Great work for parks & trails in our 2021 Annual ReportDouglas2022-08-01T12:24:28-07:00

SCoCo is back, bigger than ever

SCoCo is back, bigger than ever

Student Conservation Corps didn’t find their new crew leader so much as he found his way back to them.

Since graduating from Bainbridge High School in 2008, Ian Shiach had earned two environmental science degrees, taught leaf transpiration to high schoolers and phenology – that’s the study of seasonal phenomena in the life cycles of animals and plants – to undergrads, and led youth conservation groups in the field. Now back on the island, he’d started volunteering in island parks.

Run SCoCo, the Park District’s summer youth stewardship program? Yes, he could do that.

“When we hired him, I made them promise they wouldn’t replace me,” joked Morgan Houk, Volunteer Program Manager for Bainbridge Metro Parks and a fellow 2008 BHS alum. “He’s incredibly qualified to do what he’s doing, and he’s been an awesome addition.

“He brings a knowledge of plants and biology that’s really unique, and I think the kids really enjoy […]

SCoCo is back, bigger than everDouglas2022-07-27T12:07:19-07:00

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

Register today for Pritchard Park volunteer day Feb. 19

Register today for Pritchard Park volunteer day Feb. 19

Join us for Pritchard Park Volunteer Work Day, 10 a.m. to noon Saturday, Feb. 19, the Day of Remembrance.

Help beautify Pritchard Park in advance of 80 Years of Healing, March 30, 2022 observance of the forced wartime exclusion of Japanese Americans from Bainbridge Island.

Please pre-register for this event

Feb. 19 is the annual Day of Remembrance for Executive Order 9066, which authorized the wartime exclusion. The Bainbridge community is invited to refresh and replant the Exclusion Memorial grounds and surrounding park. Pre-register for that event here.

What to bring: We suggest volunteers wear sturdy, close-toed shoes, long pants, work gloves and your favorite tools. Please also bring your own water bottle if you’d like one.

We will email you before the event with additional information, including the work plan and tasks.

COVID-19 Requirements

• All participants must respond to a COVID questionnaire prior to participating in the event

• Proof of vaccination and […]

Register today for Pritchard Park volunteer day Feb. 19Douglas2023-01-11T09:42:10-08:00

Volunteers boost restoration at Blakely Harbor Park

Volunteers boost restoration at Blakely Harbor Park

Not unlike the rest of us, Blakely Harbor Park came out of lockdown ready to reconnect with friends.

Bainbridge park usage soared during COVID’s first year – how long ago that now seems, but who didn’t want to get outside? But the pandemic also curbed stewardship programs that overlay the Park District’s regular maintenance work to help keep parks healthy and smart.

As the clouds of pandemic cleared a bit this past year, volunteers safely returned to the field and island parks came out the better – perhaps none more than Blakely Harbor.

There, a concentrated, months-long effort by Bainbridge Metro Parks, supported by the Bainbridge Island Parks Foundation and the City of Bainbridge Island, paid off with a newly restored meadow and shoreline.

It began in spring with blackberry and ivy pulls, tough work that continued through the summer months. By fall, with noxious vines […]

Volunteers boost restoration at Blakely Harbor ParkDouglas2021-12-22T11:09:07-08:00

Join the Moritani Preserve Advisory Committee

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 CommitteeDouglas2021-12-08T08:13:23-08:00