January 2020 - Marymoor Park Habitat Restoration Update

By Emily Kistler

For the Marymoor clean up in January, we were fortunate to have partly sunny skies and cold weather. This was a big improvement from our cold, rainy December work party! We had over 60 volunteers in attendance and about half were youth volunteers, which gave us over 190 volunteer hours for January. A big thank you to everyone who showed up!

Our work party focused on digging out English hawthorns from the grassy meadow as well as blackberry vines. We were able to clear out 12 cubic yards of invasive plant material. The areas where invasive plants were removed were covered with 10 cubic yards of mulch.

English hawthorn is invasive tree that is not native to this region. They are fast growing, prolific reproducers and are difficult to remove. When removing English hawthorn as a sapling, it’s important to remove as much of the root system as possible so that it doesn’t return. For larger trees, they are treated with an herbicide.

We also spent some of the time marking the location of English hawthorns using our new GPS unit that was generously donated by Jim McRoberts. We’ll be passing along the locations to King county for treatment of the trees, which will help control the spread of the hawthorns.

For anyone interested in helping out at Marymoor, new volunteers are always welcome and can register at eastsideaudubon.org/marymoor-park. Our next work party is Saturday, February 1st. We look forward to seeing you there, rain or shine!