We had a great turn out for our Earth Day at the Arboretum event on Saturday, April 19. More than 100 volunteers worked with the hort crew on six restoration projects around the grounds, removing English ivy and other invasive weeds from plant collections and natural areas.
This year’s event offered a broader range of activities than usual, so that more community members could meaningfully engage in hands-on conservation. Our theme was “Powerful Pollinators,” and visitors of all ages got to build and take home their own bee hotels and learn about pollinator biology and conservation.
The volunteers got an early start, meeting on Crabapple Meadow for coffee and bagels before splitting into teams and walking with UW Botanic Garden horticulturists to their project sites. Along with individual volunteers, we had volunteer groups representing eight local businesses: AHBL, Inc., Bergsman Research Group, COLOR Creative, Croc Choc, Geosyntec, Harbor Global, HBB Landscape Architecture, and Jacobs.
Jacobs.
The weeding party along Arboretum Creek was led by a team of UW Restoration Ecology Network capstone project students. And the kids of the Arboretum’s Fiddleheads Forest School got in on the action with a special weeding project across from the Giant Sequoia Grove. UW Botanic Gardens Manager of Horticulture Joanna Long calculated that the Earth Day volunteers pulled a total of roughly 30 cubic yards of weeds this year!
Fiddleheads students loading ivy onto a work truck. (Photo courtesy Maddie Cole/UW Botanic Gardens)
At the Graham Visitors Center terrace, we supplied visitors with materials and instructions on how to build their own mini bee hotel to take home and support mason bees and other native pollinators in their neighborhoods. Special thanks to our volunteer extraordinaire Jim Olson for constructing two dozen bee hotel frames for the event!
Educators from UW Botanic Gardens, Xerces Society, and King County Master Gardeners were on-hand to teach visitors fun facts about the tiny creatures that power our ecosystems and how to create pollinator-friendly habitats in their gardens at home.
It was a busy and buzzy day in support of public lands!
Thanks to UW Botanic Gardens and Seattle Parks and Recreation for partnering with us on this uplifting annual event. A special shot out to Oxbow Bakery in Montlake for providing us with two shopping bags of delicious bagels to feed our volunteers.
Volunteers and UW students removed Himalayan blackberry and other weeds along Arboretum Creek.
Visitors making a bee hotels on the Visitors Center Terrace.
Visitors making a bee hotels on the Visitors Center Terrace.
Visitors learning about pollinators at the Visitors Center.
Group shot of the volunteers on Crabapple Meadow.
