See a brand new Northwest native garden

Loop past the west side of Seattle's Salmon Bay School (19th Ave NW, north of 65th Street) and you'll see recent handiwork of 3rd- through 5th-graders: a newly-planted water-wise garden featuring 38 species of Pacific Northwest natives. Four Salmon Bay classes participating in Homewaters Project's year-long "Watershed Gardens" water conservation program planted 450 shrubs and small plants in one day!

Earlier this year, the students conducted school water audits (do you know how many times you flush a day and how long you let the water run?), used math to calculate the area of the garden, researched native plants, sheet-mulched the site and spread compost. Before the end of the school year, they will educate the community on ways to conserve water. This garden is part of that effort.

Creek Peek for Families

You can view this new garden from the sidewalk. Take a look! How many of the 38 different native plant species can you find? If you don't have any Northwest natives in your own yard, start with something small like a salal plant, Oregon grape or sword fern. Salmon Bay School's water-wise garden will require supplemental water at first. But once it's established, it will need little, if any, water or fertilizer, because native plants are adapted to our local climate and soils. 

Subterranean bog to be freed!

Big changes are coming to Shoreline’s Cromwell Park, the historic headwaters of Thornton Creek’s North Fork. They’ll roll public recreation, water quality and stormwater management into a whole new design. I’m personally excited about the areas labeled wetland and native wildlife habitat on the Master Site Plan (obtainable from the Cromwell Park Improvements page in the Links list at right). When you stand on this spot today, you’re standing on grass. But way down below your feet, there’s a subterranean bog just waiting to be freed! It was covered with fill during the mid-1900s, before we knew how vital it is to hang onto wetlands and bogs even in urban areas. (Did you know that wetlands store stormwater, improve water quality, help keep streams running year-round, and provide habitat?)

On a recent wet, windy day, 19 hardy souls walked from Cromwell Park around Ronald Bog to Twin Ponds, exploring the area along Thornton Creek’s North Fork. (Read an account of Homewaters Project’s North Fork Sampler Walk on the Ronald Bog Blog - see link at right). That entire area used to be a vast bog, before the peat was mined and bagged or sold by the truckload for lawns and gardens. (Note: Use horticultural grade coir instead of peat in your gardens. Peat is irreplaceable, and it’s still being mined in Canada.) Now the only thing that’s left of the bog is a name, Ronald Bog. Except . . .

Except for that tiny bit of subterranean bog below the fill in Cromwell Park that may get a second chance.

Creek Peek for Families

Reshaping Cromwell Park’s landscape is scheduled to begin this summer. Visit the park today (N 180th St between Meridian and Corliss Avenues). Find the detention pond in the northeast corner of the park (with a fence and some native redtwig dogwood around it). Stand on the grass near Meridian and think of the subterranean bog beneath your feet. Find the straight ditch where N 180th St would be, and poke around the existing wetlands near the south end of the park. Remember what they look like now, so you can compare when you come back after the redesign! Print out pages 11 and 17 of the Cromwell Park Draft Master Plan (obtainable from the Cromwell Park Improvements link at right) and take them with you.

You can also visit Shoreline Historical Museum (see link at right) when their archives are open to research peat mining in the area or to see aerial maps from 1936, 1953 and 1969 showing the transition from bog to houses and roads.