Green Seattle Day 2025 is coming up fast on October 25th, 2025! Find more information, the full event list, and sign-up links on our website. Here are some tips, tricks, and FAQs to help you get involved! Tips: Tricks: FAQ’s: We are looking forward to celebrating 20 years of the Green Seattle Partnership! If you […]

At the Green Seattle Partnership, we believe in building a more resilient urban forest across Seattle. That’s why we are so excited to share about our role in the Foresting Seattle Initiative, a 5-year project that aims to restore our urban forests, cultivate neighborhood leadership, and create opportunities for green jobs for youth. Supported with […]

Where are the bees? We may associate bees with the classic honeybee-style hive, but our native bee species are actually more likely to be nesting below your feet! Bumble bees and solitary bees are ground nesters requiring exposed soil for their homes. Bridget Kelsh, Integrated Pest Management and Wildlife Coordinator for the Seattle Parks and […]

Green Seattle Partnership has supported the cutting of 49,432 survival rings across the city. We would like to give a huge thank you to all our forest stewards and restoration crews who have dedicated their time to preserving Seattle’s historic forests! The Issue Common Ivy, also known as English Ivy, is a perennial evergreen plant […]

Making Progress in Seattle’s Urban Forest I recently returned to one of the sites at Schmitz Preserve Park where I led habitat restoration over a decade ago, and I’ll be honest, the site is a total mess. It seemed so simple in the beginning. Remove the weeds and plant native trees. What happened? At the […]

This restoration of the shoreline helps Seattle Parks and Recreation meet commitments to advance their vision of Healthy People, Thriving Environment, and Vibrant Community. As the stewards of open spaces, shorelines, and healthy urban forests, the Seattle Parks and Recreation shoreline restoration project will help to slow stormwater, stabilize banks against storm surges and provide […]

Temperatures have been steadily warming up, coaxing us to go out and enjoy the sun after a long winter. With the cherry blossoms and red flowering currants starting to add a pop of color to our local landscape, your impulse might be to start brushing away the dredges of winter foliage and restart anew for spring.

Tree’s are our natural lifeline! These breath-giving beauties work to enhance the environment, provide shelter for wildlife, increase community well-being, and hold cultural significance, all the while reducing the harmful effects of climate change. In Washington State, our urban parks and remote forests are home to these powerful beings that gift us clean air, fresh […]

Roots in Restoration Since 2004, Green Seattle has been working with the community to support healthy forests throughout the city. Our work has been guided by the basic principles of restoration as our volunteers and partners actively work to create healthy forests in Seattle’s parks and natural areas. The benefits of caring for Seattle’s urban […]

Has this ever happened to you? You’re working at your restoration site, pulling holly seedlings or digging out blackberry root balls and making great progress, feeling good, you’re in the zone! You take a breather, grab your water bottle to take a drink and as you raise your head from looking down at the ground […]

An important principle of restoration is identifying reference ecological communities to serve as guides for planning projects, while also creating benchmarks for evaluating success. Here at Green Seattle, we have identified reference ecosystems for all of our restoration sites. These references include target ecosystems that highlight the plant communities that we would like to see at […]

Climate Ready Urban Forests Constant natural environmental change from wind, droughts, and floods have helped build Seattle’s forested areas into the warehouse of biodiversity that we know today. In many ways they are not fragile, but on the other hand, the colonization and development of the land that built our communities has drastically compromised the […]

Anyone who has worked with the Green Seattle Partnership knows that much of our work revolves around removing invasive plant species so that native plant and animal species can thrive. For much of the history of restoration our actions have been pretty clear cut: we remove invasives to protect natives. I’m going to discuss […]

While the age old idiom warns of “seeing the forest for the trees,” we’re here to warn of the opposite: “seeing the trees for the forest!” What we mean is that it can be difficult to notice the difference between invasive and native species in our forests; many invasive species look quite similar to native species. […]

Photo by Todd ParkerPlanting for the FutureHere at the Green Seattle Partnership, we’re very excited about ecological restoration! We’re grateful to have done critical work with volunteers to reclaim and restore urban forests by removing aggressive weeds and planting native plants in parks all across Seattle. While weed removal and maintenance is an important part […]

The summer months make for a “berry” tasty time out in the forest. Walking through Seattle’s parks at the start of summer, you can easily spot the peachy colors of salmonberry fruit hiding in the foliage; while later in the summer, you start to notice the deep-blue berries from such native plants as salal and […]

Both nationally and worldwide, experts are watching as pollinator populations are on a steady decline due to issues of pesticides, pollution, pests, diseases, and most glaringly habitat loss and fragmentation. As the Green Seattle Partnership works with the goal to restore and maintain forested parklands and designated natural areas of Seattle, we realize how critical […]

It is now required to remove poison-hemlock on public property in King County. At the 2019 Weed List Hearing the King County Noxious Weed Control Board added poison-hemlock to the list of regulated noxious weeds for King County, with control required on public property and public rights-of-way in cities and unincorporated areas throughout the county. We want […]

For Native Plant Appreciation Week we asked our staff and volunteers to pick a favorite native plant — which is a difficult task! Most of us struggled to pick just one of our favorites because the Pacific Northwest has so many beautiful, charismatic, fun, and important native plants. Scroll below to see some of the favorites […]

How are your plant identification skills? Are you wanting a little extra challenge? Have you ever been curious about a plant during the winter but couldn’t tell what it was? Whether you’re a beginner looking to spice up your winter hikes with a new skill, or seasoned in plant identification and looking to brush up […]