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The weather was crisp, with frost riming the grass and leaves in the park. Good work kept us warm, though, and the sun shone through the thinning canopy to help.

Thirteen people were Friends of North Beach Park Saturday, ranging in age from 8 to 80 and from completely new participants to those who have been to every work party (a better record than I have, in fact).

The main goal of the day was to install plants. Some areas had been cleared by volunteers, and other areas had been cleared… by trees falling. In fact, in the last week and a half, two trees have fallen in North Beach Park, an alder and a big leaf maple.

Two fallen alder trees. The more recent one is in the center of the picture.

Looking along the fallen maple trunk, from the root ball towards the crown. In the foreground are two replacement trees, a big leaf maple and a grand fir.

A fallen tree is an important part of the forest ecosystem, and the deciduous trees in North Beach Park are at the end of their life spans. The problem is that there aren’t enough young trees to take over the canopy. North Beach Park is lucky in that we do have younger deciduous and coniferous trees (ranging from saplings up to mid-canopy), but if we hadn’t started restoring it, the forest would be in serious danger. The canopy gaps create light cones to the forest floor; in a healthy forest, this would create a great burst of energy for the next generation of trees. However, in an urban forest, the danger is that the invasive plants will really take over.

The forest floor of North Beach Park is in better shape than it was when we started. There are nearly two thousand plants installed, ranging from trees to groundcover. These will benefit from the new light from the canopy gap, and the nutrients put into the soil by the decaying wood.

Today, in fact, we planted two trees at the base of the new falls and some falls from last year: a big leaf maple (Acer macrophyllum) and a grand fir (Abies grandis). This combination went into at least three places. We also planted a number of shrubs, groundcover, and wetland plants, including several that are underrepresented or were nonexistent in the park before restoration.

In all, we planted nearly two hundred plants. The table below lists what we planted.

Nicole, Morry, Julie, Kirstie, and Lina (with Jesse nearby) work in the Central Valley. Can you find them all?

Jesse found a bug!

The stalwart crew!

Our next workparty will be January 23, 2016. We’ll be doing a lot of planting then, too, if you want to join us.

Mirrored from Nature Intrudes. Please comment over there.

It was pretty darn wet this morning, but at least it wasn’t cold. Five of us set out to do some survival rings on trees that desperately needed some help. As we walked down the trail, I tried what I remembered of the St. Crispin’s Day Speech. The bit about “those who lay warm in their beds” sounded entirely too tempting, so I stopped quickly.

Our goal was simple: put survival rings on some trail side trees on the south slope. The trees here desperately need it. There were four trees easily accessible, and we got them cleaned up in almost record time. Many of the trees that need work are in places inaccessible to volunteers — in some cases, just plain inaccessible. But these trees were very handy, with only a little brushing needed to get to work.

Here’s new volunteer Steve, posing beside a tree he cleared in record time.

Some of the ivy had been on the trees so long the roots had formed mats that came away in big sheets. Other roots had made furrows in the tree as they inhibited its growth.

Here’s Tad at the tree he cleared.

The stuff hanging down behind him is ivy that had reached the ground and rerooted. It would have broken off the branch it was dangling from in short order.

One of the last (“but not least”) things we did was get a tire in which a laurel tree had grown.

I’ve found this amusing since my early days exploring North Beach Park in 2008-9. I didn’t mourn its passing, though.

Usually work parties run for three hours, but since it was raining heavier by the minute, we were all bespattered, and had done the work we’d set out to do, we called it a day and headed out of the park. On our way out we found some more bottles’n'cans and took the opportunity to remove another tire.

All in all, a good, solid little work party.

Mirrored from Nature Intrudes. Please comment over there.

Saturday, August 10, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.: Art in the Garden, 8527 25th Ave. NW
We’ve mentioned this in emails before and even sent out a postcard. We’d love to see you at our table. Friends of North Beach Park will be on 25th Ave., at the southeast corner of the p-patch. We’ll have information about North Beach Park and Seattle’s forests (Courtesy Green Seattle Partnership). Art in the Garden will have a beautiful p-patch, pie auction, bake sale, food trucks, art, and more. We look forward to meeting you. For further information, visit their website.

Saturday, August 24, 9 a.m. to Noon, main entrance: Friends of North Beach Park work party.
Join us on the 4th Saturday to help make North Beach Park a better park and Seattle a better city. We provide tools, gloves and guidance. You bring a willingness to play in the woods. For registration and further details, please visit this website.

Saturday, September 14, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., main entrance: EarthCorps work party
Join us for the next EarthCorps work party. We’re making great headway in cleaning out some ivy and blackberry from the very front of the park. This is a great event to bring a group to – whether a couple friends, a family reunion, or a church group. To sign up, visit EarthCorps’ volunteer page and go to September 14th.

Both events meet at 90th St. and 24th Ave. NW. Bring water and a snack if you need it; the EarthCorps event has a lunch break. Wear sturdy shoes and weather-appropriate layers that can get dirty. (Long sleeves are helpful when working in stinging nettle and blackberry.) Parking is available on 90th St., east of 24th Ave.

Seattle Parks Foundation
Support the restoration at North Beach Park by making a tax-deductible donation to the Seattle Parks Foundation. Visit our project and click on the “Donate” button. All proceeds donated will be used in our restoration
efforts.

We look forward to seeing you at these events!

Mirrored from Nature Intrudes. Please comment over there.

As we begin our third year of restoration in North Beach Park, it’s nice to get an overview of what we’ve done so far.

But first: Don’t forget the 4th Saturday Work Party, THIS Saturday, April 27th, from 9 a.m. to noon. We’ll meet at the main entrance to the park, 90th St. and 24th Ave. NW. We’ll provide tools, gloves, and guidance; you wear weather-appropriate layers that can get dirty, and bring snacks and water as you need it. Have a question? Email [email protected] or leave it in a comment here.

Now back to the statistics. If anything, these numbers are low — I know I’ve sometimes skipped reporting some work I’ve done, and that sometimes planting parties don’t quite count accurately.

 
Work Parties

First work party (photo by Drexie Malone).

Since we began, we’ve had 53 “work log events” — which includes school groups, work parties, and the days when a couple of the forest stewards got together to hang out. This accounts for 379 adults and 165 youth, for a total of 1276 hours. And let’s not forget the 16 paid staff, for 48 hours — they do work that volunteers can’t, such as clearing fallen logs and removing woody invasives.

 
Plants of all kinds

Wetland trees and shrubs

We’ve planted more than 322 trees (conifer and deciduous), 189 shrubs, and 125 herbaceous plants; in many cases, these were native plants reintroduced to the forest. We’ve greatly increased the diversity of native plants, while we’ve been DEcreasing the diversity of the invasives. The first planting party was March, 2012. That’s pretty late in the planting season, but we had a long, cool, wet spring that year, which gave the plants plenty of time to establish before the long drought later that summer. This meant we had a pretty good establishment rate — lots of those plants are rebudding quite prettily.

 
Survival Rings

Successful Ivy Rings

One statistic that doesn’t show up in the report is the number of survival rings we’ve put around trees that are being choked by ivy. A “survival ring” involves cutting through the ivy roots at about four feet off the ground. The roots above the cut are left in place; they’ll die. The roots below the cut are pulled back off the tree, and pulled up from the ground as much as possible. If it’s feasible, a 6′ ring is cleared (and then mulched) around the tree. The Ivy Ring Crew has removed ivy from more than 50 trees. This is sometimes quite an arduous process; it’s the hardest physical job we do in the park — other than hauling out large trash items.

 
Trash

Rite of Passge

This is my favorite picture of a trash pile. No, the kids aren’t trash. They’re an 8th grade class from a University District alternative middle school. This was the largest single trash pile we got out of the park, and it includes tires, wheels, shopping carts, bags of cans’n'bottles, and more. It was large enough for more than 20 8th graders to pose on, after all. Other notable finds have included water heaters and oil tanks, a vacuum cleaner, a washing machine body, a couch, a playhouse for dolls, and tires. Lots of tires. In a more densely populated area of the city, the trash would have been much higher.

The amount of trash that comes out of the park on an average work party is visibly decreasing. We used to send groups into the park just to get trash; nowadays we might not find anything.

All this is just “a good start.” There are still many trees with ivy growing up into their crowns, still lots of blackberry, still plenty of areas of the park we haven’t gotten to — and might not for a few years.

The work is great fun, and we hope you can join us. It’s physically demanding and psychologically rewarding. Plus, shared work is a great way to meet people. If you can’t make it to North Beach Park, go to Green Seattle Partnership’s website and find an event near you.

Mirrored from Nature Intrudes. Please comment over there.