Stewardship Partners is thrilled to welcome Kiersten and Lauren to the team. They joined us in early April as part of our Snoqualmie Stewardship Habitat Restoration crew. They jumped right into helping us install and plant the Carnation Elementary School rain garden (the second one there) and the Griffin Creek Farm rain garden. We look forward to having a full crew in the Snoqualmie once again!
Growing Groceries Classes: Wednesdays at 7 pm – January through June
Learn best practices for growing fruits and vegetables in Western Washington!
Bellevue Demo Garden Workshops: Saturdays at 9:30 am – January through October
Covers a comprehensive offering of gardening topics with a focus on ornamental plants and gardening issues.
Tilth Alliance Gardeners Classes – Thursdays & Saturdays – Now through May – Mix of online and in person
A variety of classes on topics such as vegetable gardening, food preservation and cooking, permaculture, and urban livestock.
SCD Jumpstart Your Yard – Feb. 4th, 10am – 12pm – Woodinville
Thinking about transforming your yard this year? This introductory class will focus on effective yard design and the components needed for robust soils.
KCD Streamside Restoration: Feb. 7th, 6-7:30 pm – Webinar
Learn from restoration experts about managing your yard to support both the environment and your own needs.
How to Get RainWise: Feb 15th, 6-7 pm – Webinar
Learn how RainWise rebates for rain gardens and cisterns reduce pollution and how you can get an installation at your home!
SCD Planting a Food Forest: Feb 25th, 10-11:30 am, Webinar
Want to garden and do your part for wildlife and climate change? Consider creating a food forest! Learn all about it in this webinar!
KCD Understanding Soil Health: Feb 27th, 6-8 pm – Webinar
Learn about soil basics, KCD’s Soil Testing Program, and ways to improve soil health.
How to Get RainWise: March 1st, 6-7 pm – West Seattle
Learn about how you can apply for a rebate to cover up to 100% of the cost of your rain garden or cistern – in-person!
This has been a big year for Stewardship Partners. We are proud of our on-the-ground actions as we continue to facilitate partnerships and create measurable positive impacts on the environment and neighborhoods across the region. Please take this opportunity to show your support of Stewardship Partners before the year ends!
Stewardship Partners’ resolute staff represents the most experienced and knowledgeable people working to solve our region’s challenging environmental problems. We would like to share program highlights for the year.
The 7th annual Green Infrastructure Summit of the Salish Sea was held virtually on March 24 and 25th, and despite not being together in person (for the 3rd year in a row!) the feeling of connectedness to a community of hundreds of leaders and innovators was still profound. The 8th Summit will be in-person on March 17th so save the date.
The Snoqualmie Stewardship Program restored 1.8 acres of habitat, planted over 8,000 plants at multiple farms, and maintained one acre of restoration sites. We also received a total of $25,000 in volunteer time and over $100,000 in government grants. Two new rain gardens were installed in Carnation at the library, and another will soon be completed at Griffin Creek Farm. The program continues to expand its impact and partnerships with homeowners, businesses, and farms.
As a friend of ours, we know you’ve probably heard this before. Protecting and restoring salmon and their streams is the reason we started planting riparian habitat buffers over 20 years ago and building rain gardens in 2008. Then we created the 12,000 Rain Garden Campaign for Puget Sound back in 2011, and now we are further sharpening our focus to address runoff from our shared highways and roadways, focusing on the worst first by placing rain garden boxes under elevated highways in the densest urban areas. The concept is called ‘Adopt-a-Downspout’ but in the SP office we affectionately refer to it as ‘box of rain.’ The pilot project has been in the works behind the scenes for more than 3 years as we built a partnership with Washington State Department of Transportation. And now we are launching the pilot phase of adopt-a-downspout under the I-5 Ship Canal Bridge in Seattle, one of the most heavily trafficked roads in the state, passing over a major salmon migration corridor. We will be refining the design of our boxes of rain and testing their overall effectiveness over the coming ‘rain year’ and if the concept works as well as it is expected to, we will expand as quickly as possible to protect and restore the health of our urban streams for salmon, other wildlife and communities.
The Alliance for Pioneer Square, in collaboration with Stewardship Partners, held a volunteer planting event in March 2023 to transform four tree pits on Occidental Ave South into miniature rain gardens. The rain gardens are home to several native plant species that attract pollinators and help filter stormwater, keeping Puget Sound clean. The volunteer event was a huge success, with community members dedicating time and energy to create a unique space in Pioneer Square. In addition to rain gardens, the project included the installation of native artwork designed by Tommy Segundo, a local Native American artist, that was installed adjacent to a storm drain on the sidewalk to draw attention to where our polluted runoff goes and the importance of keeping it clean.
We are so happy to have had an in-person Feast on the Farm; the magical evening at Griffin Creek Farm was full of energy and generosity that our guests brought to the farm. We wanted to say thank you again to everyone who attended, volunteered, and donated to make our return to Feast on the Farm so special! Thanks to our generous sponsors and guests we raised $88,000 to support our work.
Stewardship Partners would not be here without you. Thank you for being dedicated to our team and our mission and loving this special place we call home. Please consider Stewardship Partners in your annual giving this year.
Thank you,
David J. Burger Christopher T. Bayley
Executive Director Founder and Board Chair
Snoqualmie Stewardship is now partnering with Grow It Forward Restoration which offers some unique new volunteer opportunities for folks. More information from GIFR below!
Do you own a pickup truck? You can use it to heal our environment by delivering native tree seedlings to habitat restoration projects! “Grow It Forward Restoration” (GIFR) is a new local non-profit that organizes gardeners to each grow 100 native tree seedlings in a “micro-nursery” in their gardens, which we sell at below cost to the many habitat organizations in our region who toil to restore ecologically vital habitat for endangered species like salmon and the orcas that feed on them. GIFR’s mission is to empower average citizens to be personally involved in habitat restoration by connecting them to the organizations who do this work.
We rely on a small fleet of volunteer pickup truck owner/drivers like you! Pickups make deliveries at 2 different times of the year. If you sign up to be on our list, you can choose to help out or not as follows:
This October and November, GIFR’s small fleet of pickup truck owners deliver finished seedlings to the sites where they will start a new forest. As we get orders for seedlings, we will ask if you are available during a specific time period to make a delivery as follows:
In March of each year, GIFR distributes raw materials for new micro-nurseries to a new set of gardeners who will host them for 1 to 2 growing seasons. We need pickup truck owner/drivers to deliver 500 lbs of clean topsoil for each new micro-nursery as follows:
You may also consider becoming one of our micro-nursery hosts. Here is how that goes:
If you are interested, please go to our website https://growitfwd.org/ where you will find two forms, one to be a pickup truck owner/driver, and one to host a micro-nursery. Signing up to be a pickup truck driver/owner will put you on our list of possible drivers, and we will later contact you as we are ready to make deliveries and ask if you are available. If you sign up to host a micro-nursery, we will send you a PayPal invoice for $100, then as March approaches, arrange for delivery of your soil and tell you how to pick up your pots and baby seedlings (probably from the Phinney Neighborhood Center in N Seattle).
On April 4, 2022, we lost a long-time partner and Snoqualmie Valley mainstay. Hiram Scott Wallace, an advocate of environmental conservation, agricultural stewardship, and a wealth of Snoqualmie Valley history will be dearly missed. Chris LaPointe, Stewardship Partners Director of Ecological Restoration, says they will miss their frequent meetings and lunches with Scott at his favorite local Chinese restaurant, Twin Dragon in Duvall. Scott’s legacy will live on as Stewardship Partners continues to restore salmon habitat on his former family dairy farm known as “Wallace Acres.” Read Scott’s Obituary Here
April is our favorite time of the year! The sun is showing itself again, temps are warming up (ever so slightly), new leaves are beginning to reveal themselves, it’s planting season and it’s EARTH MONTH! It’s been almost three years since we’ve been able to celebrate Earth Day in the field by engaging the public in direct environmental action. Earth Day turns 42 years old on April 22nd and we invite you to help us celebrate it all month long. We are organizing multiple riparian restoration events focusing on salmon habitat restoration on the Snoqualmie River in Carnation and Duvall, WA (dates below). Join us in the celebration!
As we head into Earth month, we’ve got some great events in the works!
It’s been far too long since we’ve posted a volunteer event on our website, but we are thrilled to let you know that we will be doing so soon! In early March 2022 you’ll be able to sign up for events! Volunteer Event Sign Up
In the meantime, here’s what we have in the works thus far in terms of events!
The crew attended a Wilderness First Aid (WFA) training with CPR Seattle and are now all certified wilderness first aid responders! WFA is an intensive 16-hour program designed for anyone involved in wilderness work or recreation. Safety in the field is extremely important, as often our crew members are working together at very rural sites where there may be nothing but nature surrounding them. Having this certification means that our hard-working crew members are well prepared in the event of an emergency while in the field. Something that we hope never happens, but is important to be prepared for!
After running the numbers, we have found that Stewardship Partners spends at least $9,000 annually hauling plants to our project sites.
With a UTV (Utility Terrain Vehicle), one person can haul 20 trees, while transporting 3 total crew members to the site and takes 4 minutes roundtrip. The wagons and carts we currently use takes 20 minutes roundtrip, hauling only 16 trees of the same size. Many of our project sites require us to haul trees and carts for roundtrips of up to 4 miles. This method is cumbersome, leads to cart tips, tree drops and takes a toll on our bodies.
Because of this, our field crew could greatly utilize a UTV. We have our eyes on a Bighorn Outrider 200 and are seeking private donations to help us fund this purchase. Any gifts made for this purpose would help greatly improve our field productivity, enabling us to plant more trees and restore more of the Valley. Our field crew and the Snoqualmie River would be eternally grateful.
To support this purchase, please use the donation button below or mail a check!
Over the last two decades, we’ve seen a lot of tangible results from the miles of restored riparian habitat on agricultural properties in the Snoqualmie Valley. We have impressive before and after shots of our restoration sites previously covered in invasive plant species that have now become ecologically diverse habitat corridors teeming with native trees, shrubs and groundcover shading streams and the river so salmon can thrive. The Alder Grove at Oxbow Farm & Conservation Center is a perfect example of that diversity of life and our hard restoration work in action. The Alder Grove is maintained on a regular basis and the plants are thriving. We were thrilled to learn of some footage from a wildlife cam that showed much more than plant life thriving in the buffer, a rarely seen bobcat. Nothing warms our hearts more than seeing firsthand the fruits of our labor. A special thank you to Oxbow for their long-term commitment to the health of the ecosystem. Read More
