The Green Seattle Partnership Blog
Live Plant Walks!
During this past month we've celebrated the 50th anniversary of Earth Day and Native Plant Appreciation Month, all while adapting to the changing circumstances caused by the coronavirus. One of the most popular activities we've had the pleasure of sharing last month...
Earth Day 2020
2020 marks the 50th year since the original Earth Day. As we move into a new decade, organizations like Earth Day Northwest 2020 are working to shift the focus from one day of action to long term commitments to sustainability. Here, we look back at the impact of the...
Earth Month Book Club
It's easy to feel disconnected from both our human and natural communities right now. And with Earth Day approaching, and many of the traditional celebrations having been cancelled, many of us are feeling a little lost. To celebrate Earth Month, and encourage human...
Reference Ecosystems and Their Plant Communities
An important principle of restoration is identifying reference ecological communities to serve as guides for planning projects, while also creating benchmarks for evaluating success. Here at Green Seattle, we have identified reference ecosystems for all of our...
Seattle Joins 11 American Cities to Discuss Care of City Forests
A few years ago, I spent several months working remotely in Seattle, writing a management plan for forested natural areas in New York City. It was during this time that I developed an appreciation for the sophistication and dedication of natural area programming in...
Outdoor Activities for Out of School Youth
With school cancelled, and some very important social distancing measures in place, many families are starting to feel a little cooped up. Luckily it is possible to safely explore many of our urban outdoors areas I'm here with some fun, educational and, energy-using...
Climate Ready Urban Forests
Climate Ready Urban Forests Constant natural environmental change from wind, droughts, and floods have helped build Seattle’s forested areas into the warehouse of biodiversity that we know today. In many ways they are not fragile, but on the other hand, the...
Seedling Survival in Seattle Parks
Two Years of Hard-Earned Lessons in Seedling Survival Seattle Parks and Recreation along with the Green Seattle Partnership work hard to ensure tree planting projects lead to healthy and resilient forests. To better understand how well our seedlings are surviving,...
Adapting Stewardship to Adaptive Migrations
Anyone who has worked with the Green Seattle Partnership knows that much of our work revolves around removing invasive plant species so that native plant and animal species can thrive. For much of the history of restoration our actions have been pretty clear...
Invasive Plant Look-alikes!
While the age old idiom warns of "seeing the forest for the trees," we're here to warn of the opposite: "seeing the trees for the forest!" What we mean is that it can be difficult to notice the difference between invasive and native species in our forests; many...
2019 Accomplishments!
The numbers for 2019 are in and they are absolutely incredible! Over the course of 72,248 volunteer hours, there were 90,233 native plants installed, and 2,925 trees saved from English ivy. This work took place across 155 parks and at 1,522 volunteer events, which is...
The Magical World of Mushrooms
Note: this blog post is not meant as a guide to identifying and collecting edible mushrooms. If you are interested in learning more about edible mushrooms please check out the Puget Sound Mycological Society (http://www.psms.org/index.php) As we transition from rainy...