At the 2023 Green Infrastructure Summit of the Salish Sea we are taking the historic opportunity to look at the way infrastructure investments have been done to date, and inform the ways that we want them done now. This year’s theme is: Money as Medicine* – Historic investments are an historic opportunity for healing that we can’t afford to miss. There will be presentations and discussions on funding, workforce and career pathways, regional coordination, research, modeling, design and planning at watershed scales, and food systems too. We’ll have opportunities to walk outside, share food and drinks together, talk in the hallways, and yes, we will talk about tires too!
On behalf of an incredible host committee and Stewardship Partners, please join us.
What: The 8th annual Green Infrastructure Summit of the Salish Sea Where: Mobius Hall, Cascadia College, Bothell, WA (with an online livestreaming option for the larger sessions) When: March 17, 2023 (approx. 8:30 AM-4:30 PM) Register Now: Eventbrite *Acknowledgement to Edgar Villanueva who popularized the concept ‘money as medicine’ in his important book, Decolonizing Wealth.
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!
We are excited to return to Griffin Creek Farm on Saturday, September 16th to support and celebrate local farms and our efforts to restore habitat and promote sustainable agriculture. There are lots of ways you can be a part of this magical night – please reach out to us if you are interested in sponsoring, donating or volunteering!
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.
Artist Tommy Segundo
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
As part of a broader greenspace improvement project, 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. This ecologically beneficial beautification project is the result of the volunteer group’s work! Funding for this project was made possible by Historic South Downtown.
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.
GivingTuesday is a global day of generosity that will take place on November 29, 2022. GivingTuesday was created in 2012 as a simple idea: a day that encourages people to do good. Over the past ten years, this idea has grown into a global movement that inspires hundreds of millions of people to give, collaborate, and celebrate generosity.
When you make a gift on Giving Tuesday, you’re supporting more than Stewardship Partners; you’re also supporting the wildlife, people, and natural splendor of our Puget Sound home. Your donation attests to the importance of clean water, healthy salmon and wildlife habitats, sustainable agriculture, healthy communities, and overall stewardship of our shared environment. We hope you will consider supporting us on November 29th!
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:
We ask if you can make deliveries up to 2 weeks in advance. If so, we provide contact information for 2 or 3 micro-nursery hosts, and the organization getting the seedlings.
You contact everyone and arrange a time to pick up the seedlings from each host then deliver them to a local restoration organization’s site.
You go to each micro-nursery, several days in advance if you like, and with the host’s help, load the potted seedlings into your truck. Each is about 5 lbs, 3 feet tall in a pot 4 inches square and 10 inches tall. A pickup truck holds 200 to 250 seedlings.
You deliver the seedlings to the grateful habitat restoration organization at the scheduled time and location.
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:
We ask if you are available up to 2 weeks in advance of our kickoff date, usually the first weekend in March. If so, we give you the contact information for 2 or 4 new micro-nursery hosts.
You reach out each host to arrange when and where to deliver 500 lbs of soil to each.
You go to a Pacific Topsoils location at a time convenient to you. You tell them to charge the soil to us. They load your truck with 1/2 cubic yard of topsoil (about 1,000 lbs for 2 micro-nurseries), or 1 cubic yard if your truck has the capacity.
You then drive to each gardener’s home and shovel the soil off the back of your truck. (The host is responsible for picking up 100 pots and bare root seedlings from us). The soil is very fluffy and fairly easy to shovel down off the truck since gravity is working for you!
You may also consider becoming one of our micro-nursery hosts. Here is how that goes:
You must live in the Seattle/East side area and have basic gardening skills
Pay $100 to Grow It Forward Restoration for the materials for your micro-nursery (500 lbs of soil, delivered, 100 bare root baby seedlings, 100 plastic nursery pots)
You must pot all 100 seedlings within 2 days of getting them on the first Sunday in March, requiring about 5 hrs. of light work.
You need to devote 16 square feet (4 feet by 4 feet for example) of garden space that has partial sun and shade (full sun is too much, full shade with dappled sun is good, half sun and half shade each day is good.)
You agree to host the micro-nursery for one or two growing seasons until the seedlings are big enough, keeping them in a partially shaded spot, and watered through spring and summer dry spells.
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).
Gather your friends and family for a beautiful summer evening of baseball on Stewardship Partners Night July 25th! With this offer, $5 of every ticket sold will benefit us and our efforts to restore Salmon habitat, build green stormwater infrastructure and more. We hope to see you there and GO M’S!
For the first time since pre-Covid, Stewardship Partners now has a full field crew! We are pleased to have Aaron, Maggie and Mar working with us this year! This group is strong, knowledgeable and makes a great team. This season, we have been working extra hard to remove a ton of stubborn blackberry roots from our sites (grubbing) and filling in the areas with native plants. We look forward to this arduous work paying off by allowing us to cut back on our summer maintenance demands and improve plant health. We’re eagerly awaiting spring to see how our winter work has paid off and for volunteer events to hopefully resume! Meet our crew below!
Ashley Aversa – Ecological Restoration Project Manager Ashley first joined our Team during fall of 2020. She hails from the Pinelands region of New Jersey, where she worked with Rutgers University and SJ Land and Water Trust. Her work focused on program development, stream monitoring, habitat restoration and green infrastructure projects. Ashley holds an Executive Masters in Natural Resources from Virginia Tech, with a focus on water resource stewardship. In her spare time, Ashley enjoys wild foraging, herbalism and exploring the PNW with her partner and hound Arrow.
Magie Regis – Ecological Restoration Crew Member Maggie joined the restoration crew team during the winter of 2021. She was born in the Seattle area but was raised in Northern California and moved back to Washington about 10 years ago. Maggie attended Whitworth University in Spokane WA where she earned a B.S. in Biology and minored in Environmental Science and Technical Theatre. She loves working outdoors with nature and wildlife as seen in her work with Washington State Parks, the Woodland Park Zoo as a Research Assistant, and the Sierra Nevada Americorps Partnership program doing watershed restoration, monitoring and outreach. In her spare time, she enjoys musicals, exploring national and state parks, board games and reading.
Aaron Cloudwood – Ecological Restoration Crew Member Aaron joined the restoration crew during the fall of 2021. Originally from Portland, Aaron moved to Seattle in 2006 to pursue a degree from the University of Washington in Physics and has since been dedicated to protecting the natural world with an emphasis on water resources. Just prior to joining Stewardship Partners, he was a Seattle Public Utilities RainWise contractor, working with homeowners and schools to install green stormwater infrastructure. In his spare time, he enjoys foraging with his partner, gardening, and building things.
Anne Marie Stapper – Ecological Restoration Crew Member Anne Marie joined the ecological restoration crew in January of 2022. After moving to Seattle from Austin, Texas in June of 2021, they joined an AmeriCorps field restoration crew where they worked to restore natural areas across the Salish Sea region. Anne Marie graduated from The University of Texas at Austin in December of 2020 with a B.A. in Geography, Anthropology, and Sustainability Studies. They have a background in environmental education, soils and watershed research, and landscaping, and hope to return to school in the future. In their free time, they enjoy creating music with friends, reading, and exploring the natural areas of the Pacific Northwest.
2018 was an incredibly productive year for the Snoqualmie Stewardship Program field crew. We had the opportunity to work on exciting new properties as well as create new volunteer partnerships. This year also brought our first fee for service work through our partnership with Capri Property Management for a streambank stabilization project in Woodinville. The project involved laying out rolls of coir fabric and the installation of hundreds of livestakes and shrubs to better hold the slope together. This was a fun project for us and allowed us to work with some plants that are not typically in our palette.
Our planting goals for the year were far exceeded with the installation of over 17,000 trees and shrubs throughout the Snoqualmie watershed. Most notably was the phase two section of the Aronica Family property. We partnered with Microsoft this year for the annual Day of Caring event and were able to prepare a large area for a Fall planting at Aronica. We also had our friends at Aspect Consulting out to our site at Carnation Farms where we planted 1,000 trees and shrubs along the Snoqualmie River!
The Snoqualmie Stewardship Habitat Restoration Crew
We are ever thankful to all of the landowners, partners,
volunteers and other agencies that allow us all to become better stewards of
the land through education, restoration and hard work!
If you would like more information on the Snoqualmie Stewardship Program or have a project that you think our crew could help with, please visit stewardshippartners.org or contact Chris Lapointe at cl@stewardshippartners.org.
