Marymoor Park Update
By Jeremy Lucas
Jeremy Lucas, Conservation Chair of Eastside Audubon
Back in November, I wrote an article describing Marymoor’s efforts to cut back on the invasive plant species, reed canary grass. The idea is to cut willow stakes from a Scouler’s Willow “harvest area” and plant the stakes where the Reed Canary Grass has taken over.
While COVID-19 has created many obstacles including limitations on group sizes, I am happy to report that we have held two great restoration events and would like to take a minute to highlight what we have done.
On November 7th, a small group of four Eastside Audubon volunteers were joined by two King County employees to harvest Scouler’s Willow stakes. The harvest area was the densely wooded area around the Sammamish Rowing Association’s Boathouse. Picture a bunch of smiling faces (or, rather, smiling eyes), getting muddy and wet and cutting stakes off of living willow trees. All told, we harvest 300 willow stakes.
On December 5th, six Eastside Audubon volunteers and one King County employee planted the 300 harvest willow stakes in an area of reed canary grass infestation. The area is about 1,700 square feet and located across a paved trail from the Audubon shed. Again, smiling faces (behind face masks), great conversations, and hard work all around!
There isn’t much more to say, except that I am excited to see how this area will change over time after our restoration efforts! Willows grow relatively fast and, if successful, should be a great natural control on the invasive reed canary grass. Thank you to all of the volunteers who helped make this a reality! Keep an eye our for more updates on this project, and enjoy the photos from our restoration days.
