Tired Volunteers gather for a photo at the end of the day in front of a patch of mulch

Geeze, we have so many beautiful parks in the Pacific Northwest, boy are we lucky!  Ever wondered who takes care of those parks?  Well Saturday, July 7^th, 39 volunteers joined EarthCorps and the Green Seattle Partnership at Lincoln Park in West Seattle to help restore the area.  Their goal was to remove invasive species such as English Ivy and Himalayan Blackberry which choke out native plants and bring early deaths even to large trees. 

   All in all, they managed to maintain 4917 square feet of recently planted native plants in order to help them survive the summer season, and also mulched another 1479 square feet of native plants with woodchips to help them retain water.  Lina Rose of EarthCorps said that “It was a really fun event to manage and I believe the volunteers had an awesome time.  I really enjoyed educating volunteers on native and invasive species because there were such a variety of both in the sites we were working in.”

   She also noted that it was great to watch volunteers differentiate between native trailing blackberry and invasive Himalaya Blackberry while asking great questions about ID’ing plants and restoration in general.  The volunteers came together towards the end of the day to lay a tremendous amount of mulch in a very short time period.

   Lina, excited about the energy of all of the volunteers that day, slipped up and played favorites by saying “West Seattle Volunteers Rock!”  Followed shortly thereafter by “well, all volunteers are amazing.”  It’s hard not to get excited about zealous volunteers!  Lina concludes, “We had ambitious goals at the beginning of this event as to what we would accomplish and the volunteers really stepped up to the challenge and I believe had great fun in the process.”

(Photo and event information provided by Lina Rose, EarthCorps Project Manager)