EOS celebrates 4th annual Green Seattle Day

The Green Seattle Partnership was formed in 2004 as the result of an agreement between the city of Seattle and the Cascade Land Conservancy. In the past, 450 acres of land has been restored, 40,000 trees have been planted and over 300,000 volunteer hours have been logged thanks to the hard work and dedication of the community during Green Seattle Day.

This year the partnership set a goal to have 1,000 volunteers participate at 17 different sites all over Seattle. As a Green Seattle Community Partner, EOS Alliance spent Saturday, November 7th at the Maple School Natural Area planting native species of trees and shrubs across the 15 acre green space. We had 12 youth and 18 adult volunteers working with the Sustainability Team throughout the day.

Garfield HS Key Club hard at work

The morning skies seemed clear at first, but we were swallowing our hopes of a nice planting day after introductions and enjoying some morning snacks. As we finished our tool safety discussion and started to go into a demonstration of correct planting procedure, the rain started to come down hard. Regardless of the weather, the crew along with several volunteers from the Garfield High School Key Club trudged through the mud and carefully navigated across the slippery leaf-covered slope. We fought to keep the team morale high as our gloves quickly got heavy with mud and the cold rain started slow our progress. After just a couple of hours of hard work we were able to transplant many Red Alder, Big Leaf Maple, Douglas Fir, and Western Red Cedar trees along with Sword Ferns and various shrubs, such as Snowberry, Salal and Kinnikinnik. Due to the extreme weather conditions the EOS team decided to call off the planting early. Even though we had to cut the event short, over 100 plants made it into the ground.

Muddy, but still smiling

After regrouping and doing some quality control, the rain seemed to subside. Luckily, we had previously scheduled a second round of volunteers to show up around 1:30 PM for more planting. A group of about 15 members from a wedding party wanted to celebrate their special day by getting outside and making a difference in their community. The afternoon was beautiful and another 60 plants were brought to rest in their new home at the Maple School Natural Area. This brought our planting total to just about 160 for the day. All of the plants were donated to EOS by the Green Seattle Partnership. Overall, Green Seattle Day was a success and everyone involved gained something positive from the experience.

A great way to spend the day, even your wedding day!

For more information on Green Seattle Day or the Green Seattle Partnership visit:

http://www.greenseattle.org/