In September Tahoma High School’s Green Team was approached by Shadow Lake Bog’s program, Save Habitat and Diversity of Wetlands (SHADOW), to plant a garden for educational purposes at the bog. Since then the Green Team has been hard at work figuring out how to make a garden filled with edible and medicinal plants.
Kathryn Owen, the president of the school’s Green Team, volunteered along with the rest of the team to clean up the bog area.
The team has been planning a garden mainly for educational purposes, to teach the community about the local ecosystem and invasive species, Owen said. The garden will only have native plants, which promotes the local ecosystem and restoring what is already there, instead of letting invasive species take over like the Himalayan Blackberry.
The garden will keep the blackberries down and will make room for native plants to grow and survive instead of being taken over by invasive plans, Grace Lundt said, Green Team student leader in charge of the garden project.
After the team was approached, they began trying to figure out how to implement a garden and how to make it successful. The team did all of the hard work and cleaned up the area where the garden will go, got all of the necessary tools and designed the garden.
Now the team needs physical bodies to put in the plants. On April 23 SHADOW is having a work party on behalf of the Green Team. At the work party they are asking for volunteers to come and help put in the plants. Everything will be provided, they just need bodies, Owen said.
From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. every Saturday between now and the work party the team will be preparing the garden site and volunteers are also needed for that.
Once everything is planted they want to clear more land around the garden to make it larger, Lundt said. It will be open to the public and also part of the educational tours SHADOW does. Since native plants will be put in, they won’t require too much maintenance, Lundt said. Native plants are generally fine with Washington weather. The Green Team will keep an eye on the garden along with SHADOW but it should maintain itself for the most part, Lundt said.
“We just want the gardens to protect the land and get educational use out of it too,” Lundt said.
The most exciting part for Lundt is that it is the first big project she has worked on and how much it will benefit the community, she said.
Owen has heard many misconceptions about the Green Team and most people think they are tree huggers who like to put stickers everywhere and not actually do anything for the environment, she said. This is another opportunity to show the community they are actively making a change and are promoting the local ecosystems and encouraging sustainable practices, Owen said.
Before the team started to volunteer with SHADOW, the land they are using for the garden was a local garbage dump. It was restored enough to have most of the land healthy.
The team wants people to learn about the importance of keeping native plants around, since it clears out many toxins naturally.
“It’s such a hidden little treasure, it’s such a pretty walk most people don’t know about,” Lundt said.
To help at the work party, there is a registration form to fill out so the team will know how many tools to provide. Visit www.eventbrite.com and search Earth Day 2016 Volunteer Garden Ground-Breaking & Planting Work Party and click on the register button. The work party is from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. April 23.
