Editor’s note: Peter initially floated the concept of NatureSpace in a “Letter to the Board” editorial more than a year ago and subsequently garnered support from BWNA and Friends of Wilshire Park, which helped facilitate grant funding to launch the project.
Mother Nature’s climax to Wilshire Park’s NatureSpace Community Planting Day last November couldn’t have been more dramatic. Moments after a final group photograph was snapped from atop the massive stump provided by Portland Parks & Recreation (PP&R) Urban Forestry, a dark shadow passed over the crowd, and none other than a bald eagle settled on a nearby Douglas fir branch, as if to say thank you to the assembled volunteers. And a big thank you was well deserved, with over 80 people of all ages giving up a weekend morning to tuck 1,300 native trees, shrubs, ferns, ground covers, and other plants into the earth, and having a fun time together doing it.
Orchestrated by volunteer landscape designer Jeffrey Farr (Lumo Landscape Design), Eric Rosewall (coordinator of the PP&R Ecologically Sustainable Landscapes Program), and Johnny Fain (PP&R horticulturist) in collaboration with Northeast Parks Maintenance Supervisor Mike Grosso, the Community Planting Day event benefited from the advice of horticultural experts from the Columbia Slough Watershed Council and PP&R Stewardship Program, who were on site to answer questions, provide planting tips, and pitch in where needed.
Impressively, when volunteers showed up at 8:00 a.m., the landscape plan was already carefully laid out with white lines indicating the locations of different types of plants. Also laid out was a scrumptious array of goodies contributed by Grand Central Bakery, Beaumont Market, Bagel Land, and Petite Provence, with hot coffee from the local Starbucks. And of course there would have been nothing for volunteers to plant without grant support from Portland Department of Environmental Services’ Community Watershed Stewardship Program and the East Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District, as well as generous financial contributions from Backyard Bird Shop, local neighborhood associations (Beaumont-Wilshire and Alameda), Mahaffy Real Estate Group, The V Shop Volvo Perfectionists, Beaumont Business Association, Frazier Wealth Management, Garden Fever, and residents at large.
The 10,000-square-foot feature rests quietly on the southern side of the park, demonstrating the attractiveness of landscaping with native plants, providing interest to the nearby circle of picnic tables, offering food and shelter to birds and pollinators, reducing runoff from what was previously only compacted soil, providing a slice of natural beauty for passers-by and passers-through, and even serving as a site for Beaumont Middle School science course field trips, providing students with the opportunity to meet their ecological science requirements.
Surely the bald eagle approved!