A team of volunteers completed the
second half of fall plantings at the East Prospect Street End in
Madison Park on Saturday.
“We leave it to Mother Nature until
the spring,” said Gene Brandzel, who has been spearheading the
street-end restoration project.
Gene and Liz Brandzel led the
restoration of the 37th Avenue East shoreline street end more than a
decade ago, and now the Beaver Lodge Sanctuary offers respite for
neighbors and local wildlife.
Restoring the East Prospect Street End,
which lies just south of the Seattle Tennis Club, had been in the
works for more than five years, but had been challenged by a property
owner to the north. Following a change in ownership, the project was
able to proceed in early spring.
“People had told me it was going to
take 10 years to get this done,” Brandzel said. “It’s taken me
10 months.”
Volunteers first started getting their
hands dirty in April, clearing blackberries, ivy, clematis and
garbage that had been swallowed by vines over the years.
“Between the work parties, I was here
at least twice a week for four weeks here,” said resident Bert
Phillipp. “It looks fabulous — such an improvement from what it
was. I did not anticipate getting this done.”
Phillipp was among a primary group of
volunteers lucky enough to be working at the site during the early
phase of the restoration, when there were plenty of dumped treasures
to be unearthed; he found a muffler and tailpipe.
“When I first looked at this, I was
like, ‘This is impossible. This is a pure, dense blackberry
jungle,’” said Karen Daubert, cofounder of the Friends of Street
Ends.
Daubert has also regularly volunteered
her time on the project, and plans to use East Prospect as an example
for future projects.
There are more than 140 shoreline
street ends in Seattle. SDOT manages their improvements and access
through the Shoreline Street Ends Program, which is funded solely by
permit fees property owners pay to use several in the city’s
industrial and maritime sectors. But it's volunteers that make these
projects happen.
“This is a huge amount of support,”
said program coordinator Omar Akkari, who counts East Prospect as his
first major street-end project since starting with SDOT in August
2018.
The 11,000-square-foot site was finally
ready for planting native vegetation on Oct. 5. Thirty-four trees and
305 native shrubs were planted that month, followed by another 293
plants during the Nov. 2 work party. Brandzel credits the community
for chipping in for not only purchasing the plants, but also the
hours of labor it took to ready the site.
“I think, at this point, I’m going
to retire,” he said. “This is my swan song.”
The Brandzels turned over the popular
Beaver Lodge Sanctuary to new stewards Bruce and Lauri Bayley earlier
this year. The Bayleys have also been dedicated volunteers at East
Prospect.
It wasn’t just Madison Park residents
in the dirt during the work parties. Trees for Seattle also regularly
put out the call for volunteers.
That’s how Capitol Hill resident
Aldrinana Leung found out about the street-end project. The Nov. 2
planting party was her second time out at the site.
“I didn’t know there was like a
street-end society,” she said.
Leung brought coffee donated by the
Madison Park Starbucks on Saturday, along with her fellow barista,
Paulina Cravioto, and her husband, Jorge.
Jorge Cravioto said they helped with
plantings along the slope and building a detention wall, adding it
was a nice way to spend a Saturday morning.
Seattle Tennis Club has agreed to
provide SDOT access to its water system, and now the challenge is
finding out how to set up irrigation at the restoration site, Akkari
said. The irrigation system should only be required for the first two
years, Brandzel said, at which point the plants should be able to
survive on their own.
Still on his list are new public
benches and a table for the street end. Anyone wanting to find out
how to help can contact Brandzel at genebb@gmail.com.