OUTDOOR CLASSROOMS: BUILDING A LAKE WASHINGTON ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION COMPLEX

OUTDOOR CLASSROOMS: BUILDING A LAKE WASHINGTON ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION COMPLEX

By CHARLES ANDERSON
Anderson & Ray

A wetland gets planted at Genesee. The water will actually disappear in summer, leaving the native plants to mark its boundaries.

A walk in the woods usually means a long drive -- unless you live near one of Seattle's great parks, such as Lincoln, Discovery or Seward.

Learning about ecology has been largely limited to classrooms, zoos, and trips to national parks and monuments.

But times have changed. Environmental education is now a regular part of our public school curriculum.

And now, thanks to local support for combining environmental education with the city's park system, native landscapes and wildlife habitat are getting closer all the time.

Recent Park department open space acquisitions are being restored to native landscapes and wildlife habitat. At the same time, many of our urban parks -- neglected for years -- are getting much needed redevelopment and rehabilitation.

These rehabilitation efforts have involved school children in the design, development and care of some parks and feature areas. Interest in native plants, preservation of wildlife
Newly planted salaal, kinnikinnik and strawberry surround a vine maple on the overlook at Genesee Meadows.
habitat, and this region's connection to the worldwide food web is at an all-time high.

Along the southwestern shore of Lake Washington, extending from Seward Park at the south to Colman Park at the north, are a remarkable series of restoration projects sometimes called the Lake Washington Environmental Education Complex. Encompassed within the nearly three miles of lake shoreline are projects involving environmental education, old growth forest preservation, meadow restoration over a landfill site and the careful restoration of an historic Olmsted Park.

Seward Park is the first project in this series. It features a new native plant interpretive garden for the newly remodeled Art Annex Building. The Art Annex serves as an Environmental Education Center and day camp facility. The new native plant garden, with its interpretive signs themed to the woodland native plant communities and wildlife habitat, is the launching point for a series of nature trails into one of the three remaining old growth forests in Seattle.

Moving north, the next major park along the lake is Genesee. At the center of the park is a seven-acre restoration project called Genesee Meadow. What was once a landfill now features interpretive signed trails winding through and around mounded
Children from Hawthorne Elementary plant native strawberry and salaal. The bucket contains mycorrhizae, a native fungus that has been used primarily in reforestation. Woodland plants have been shown to develop four to six times faster when the symbiotic fungus is added at planting.
woodland islands, grasslands, and wildflowers. The idea for this project was initiated by Phil Renfrow, a senior gardener with the Parks department several years ago. A master plan was developed in 1995, and then implemented jointly by State Fish & Wildlife, the Native Plant Society, the Seattle Parks department, the Audubon Society, and other private citizens and volunteers.

The primary interpretive themes for Genesee Meadow are the meadow and associated native plant communities, wildlife habitat and historical uses of this landscape. The completed Genesee Meadow will greatly enhance native plant and wildlife habitat diversity in the city. More than 80 different species of plants have been planting in the past 12 months, all of them native. These plants make up the highly diverse plant communities which can be found in Pacific Northwest forests.

The restoration of a community of native plants to this area provides much needed urban wildlife habitat. Genesee and Seward Parks already have a highly diverse bird population, and the continued restoration and healing of the Genesee meadow will provide them with more food source habitat and will, over time, attract more species into the city environment.

Colman Park is the northernmost anchor of this outdoor environmental education complex. Plans are currently being prepared for construction which will begin this summer. This park is the most historically significant portion of the complex
School children get an early education in landscape restoration.
and is highly regarded for its classic Olmsted Brothers design, layout, and detailing.

New construction is carefully planned to complement the historic aspects of the park and enhance the wildlife habitat potential. The theme of the interpretive signs in this park will feature the Olmsted historical legacy, shoreline and riparian native plant communities, and wildlife habitat.

It is important to recognize that our urban areas should not be exempt from ecological conservation efforts, including reclamation and restoration. All landscapes are part of one continuum, and the city of Seattle is as much a part of the fabric of the pacific northwest as the meadows of the south Puget Sound and the forests of the Cascade slopes. This series of restoration projects offers all people the opportunity to observe, learn about, and appreciate the historic as well as the natural characteristics of our public landscapes.

The necessary premium for this is a strong volunteer effort by the community, commitment from public as well as private patrons, knowledgeable consultants, and a Parks staff committed to conservation and environmental education.

The immediate rewards of seeing these projects built is superseded and supplanted by the knowledge that the educational information presented will engage countless passersby, illustrating for them the value of our native sustainable landscape and the importance of landscape as a cultural legacy.

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