Have you ever spotted a great horned owl? Last December, a young parkgoer was fortunate enough to find one – in an unfortunate situation. Near the Jefferson Horticulture Facility in Beacon Hill’s Jefferson Park, the majestic bird was stuck hanging from a tree by an abandoned kite line when a young girl biking nearby saw it and reported it to a nearby Seattle Parks and […]

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 […]

Thank you to everyone who participated in Seattle Forest Week this year, from our partners who organized and hosted events to community members who showed up rain or shine! With the theme ‘Nurturing Forests and Futures: Youth Engagement in Seattle’s Urban Forest’, several events focused on youth leadership and participation. Green Seattle Partnership would especially […]

Happy Seattle Forest Week to everyone! With leaves falling, mushrooms popping, and salmon coming home, we have returned again to our season of planting and celebration in Seattle’s forests! This year, Seattle Forest Week has included an extra special opportunity to celebrate our collective accomplishments on an international stage. The Sixteenth meeting of the Conference […]

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 […]

“Trees, trees, trees” is often the message and image of the Green Seattle Partnership, but we work across the park system at sites that include wetlands, creeks, shorelines, and ponds. Our Forest stewards work along with the various critters at their sites and often times our restoration work result in the creation of more wildlife […]

Recently, I went to see a movie with my family during a sizzling summer afternoon. The irony isn’t lost on me that the sparsely treed streets outside most movie theaters are the hottest places in town. Meanwhile we sit in a comfortable air-conditioned environment to seek comfort from the heat. Looking back almost a decade, […]

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.

Did you know that the Pacific Northwest is among one of the most naturally carbon rich eco-regions in the world, and our westside forests store more carbon and sequester it at higher rates than anywhere else in the United States? As we continue to face the damaging effects of climate change; conservationist, scientists, organizations, governments, […]

Welcome to the Green Seattle Partnership Earth Month Book Club! We have curated a list of books we recommend that explore topics and first hand accounts of Indigenous and Intersectional Environmentalism all over the world. In addition to this reading list, we will be holding a live virtual book club discussion on April 21st at […]

Recently I had the pleasure of sitting down with Elizabeth Lev, who co-authored the recently published paper, “Relatively Wild Urban Parks Can Promote Human Resilience and Flourishing: A Case Study of Discovery Park, Seattle, Washington.” This sparked immediate interest for us at the Green Seattle Partnership (GSP) for a number of reasons. First, it explores […]

GSP Forest Monitoring Program turns 10! Did you know that the Green Seattle Partnership has been systematically monitoring the structure and composition of Seattle’s forested parklands for ten years?!? While inventorying and measuring vegetation have been ongoing in our parks for decades, the official launch of the GSP Forest Monitoring Program occurred in 2010. It […]

A few years ago, I spent several months working remotely in Seattle, writing a management plan for forested natural areas in New York City. It was during this time that I developed an appreciation for the sophistication and dedication of natural area programming in Seattle. My time in the city also sparked broader questions about […]

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 […]

Two Years of Hard-Earned Lessons in Seedling Survival Seattle Parks and Recreation along with the Green Seattle Partnership work hard to ensure tree planting projects lead to healthy and resilient forests. To better understand how well our seedlings are surviving, Seattle conducted surveys in 12 of its restoration projects from the 2017-2018 planting season, covering […]

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 […]

Note: this blog post is not meant as a guide to identifying and collecting edible mushrooms. If you are interested in learning more about edible mushrooms please check out the Puget Sound Mycological Society (http://www.psms.org/index.php) As we transition from rainy fall into cold winter I’ve been thinking back on the wondrous world of fall fungi […]

Things are Heating up in Seattle We have been experiencing more extreme heat events in the Pacific Northwest, and heat waves are expected to become more frequent with climate change. In an analysis of summer temperatures in 60 of the largest U.S. cities, a report from Climate Central showed: Temperatures can be a whopping 17 degrees […]

What is community science? Community science is a way for volunteers to participate in the collection of scientific data. The data collected are often used for large-scale projects, where it would be impossible for professional scientists to collect all the necessary information. Additionally, it allows researchers to analyze data from a larger geographic range than […]