E. Highland street-end work begins

Work to rehabilitate street ends in the Madison Park area has been building momentum, with a work party on Feb. 20 to remove blackberry bushes in the first step of a community improvement project.

Neighborhood volunteers and organizers turned out with gloves, shovels, digging tools and Dumpsters for the waste, working for more than three hours to cut away blackberry bushes that had consumed the end of East Highland Drive where it meets Lake Washington. The Seattle Department of Transportation and the city’s department of public utilities Seattle reLeaf Program provided other tools, mulch and Dumpsters in support of the improvement projects.

“Our project is working on sites like this,” Seattle reLeaf project manager Katie Beaver said. “The parks department does a lot inside parks to restore them. But there is also this other whole segment of public lands, like traffic triangles, street ends and unimproved right-of-ways that are a mess. They are covered in invasive species, trees are dying and they collect garbage and other things, so we really try to reactivate these sites by removing invasive species, planting desirable understory and getting volunteers involved so they are just kind of eyes on the site.

“The evergreen trees in our city really do a lot to reduce the amount of storm water that goes into Puget Sound and into Lake Washington, so keeping and preserving mature trees in neighborhoods and also to growing a larger tree canopy is important,” Beaver added.

Just getting started

More than a dozen volunteers worked throughout the Saturday morning to remove thickly growing blackberry bushes, which had completely filled the space between residences and extended to the water’s edge on Lake Washington. Lifting the spread-out bushes, volunteers worked together to cut sections of blackberries and pull away branches.

“We freed a tree, picked up five bags worth of “treasures” (I mean trash), filled a 7-yard green Dumpster and collected another 3 yards of blackberry stems and roots on a tarp,” Beaver said in an email follow-up.

Volunteer Shirley Wilson, who also helped organize the event, said she had grown up in the area but moved to California and did not return for nearly 30 years. When she returned, she said she “would stand with my feet in the water, picking blackberries, and it was just wonderful.

Wilson said of the street-end project, “We are just getting started and have many months ahead of us. After the site is cleared, we will have a better idea of what the area is like and will make a design plan. The immediate neighbors are interested in better lake access, enlarging the beach area to pre-rampant blackberry days and having a clean, natural site.”

Another work party is scheduled for the East Highland Drive street end on Saturday, Mar. 13, starting at 9:30 a.m. Volunteers will continue the blackberry removal to prepare the site for future planting. No previous gardening experience is necessary. Seattle reLeaf will provide tools, work gloves and instruction. Volunteers are encouraged to dress for the weather and wear close-toed shoes. Visit seattle.gov/trees/events.html for more information.

A list of future goals for the project includes blackberry removal, easy beach access, increased beach area, cleanup and improved neighborhood security as short-term targets for the spring and summer. Long-term goals for the fall listed maintenance and low-maintenance landscaping for areas of improvement.

Educational outreach

Underway since 2011, the Seattle reLeaf program focuses on clearing and improving pieces of land that are considered public but not maintained by the city or private landowners, Beaver said. The first of two approaches is to engage residents in a planting program, providing up to 1,000 free trees a year to homeowners and property owners, as well as planting trees along city rights-of-way.

In addition, Seattle reLeaf also hosts workshops on proper tree care, maintenance and identification, and sends out emails with daily watering reminders and other information.

“The other program is this program, called Tree Ambassador,” Beaver explaind. “We recruit volunteers; they go through a series of training. They learn about restoration, and they also learn about trees.”

The program holds monthly “tree walks,” during which neighbors and visitors take a guided tour of areas with trees, and talks about the various species, history and interesting facts about trees along the way. Attendees gain information on trees and are able to take other people on public tree walks in their neighborhoods, Beaver said.

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