Here are the long awaited for details of next month's service project.
The Sunflower Society is being called upon to help prepare the ground, plants, and general area for a new demonstration garden just outside the fence to Camp Caro at Dishman Hills. Demonstration gardens are great teaching tools that allow for many species of plants to be talked about without having to hike all around the forest to lay claim to seeing the myriad of plants that grow in a given area.
Below is not the plan for the area we will be working in, but this graphic helps represent how cool a demonstration garden can be. And I am sure that when the West Valley Outdoor Learning Center come with their students to plant the garden they will make sure to plant some Oregon Sunflowers (aka. Arrow Leave Balsamroot) in honor of our group.
On Saturday April 9th meet at 9:30 at Camp Caro of Dishman Hills Natural Area (605 S. Sargent Rd, Spokane Valley WA) and we should wrap up our work at or before 1:00 pm. If you feel the need to leave earlier in order to maintain nap schedules, that is totally fine.
We have been asked to dress our families and ourselves in RED so that we will be easy to spot among the hundreds of other volunteers on site volunteering for the more laborious tasks of building fences and rerouting trails.
This event is being sponsored by the Spokane REI store, and therefore we ask you to sign up through their wonderful website hosted at: http://www.rei.com/event/19036/session/23488
The reasons for working in this area are many fold, but here are two great ones to reflect on. For years to come the children who walk by this demonstration garden will be able to learn from the plants labeled there. All the children who do have a hand in building the garden can take pride it visiting 'their' plants again and again. The second and more community wide goal emanating from this service project is that a committed group of volunteers would desperately like to see the wildlife habitat corridor from Camp Caro to Big Rock conserved. This land stretches for many miles over many geographic features and could create a sort of dream trail. If the three public lands areas of Dishman Hills, Iller Creek County Conservation Area, and Big Rock were all linked then the children and wild animals of Spokane Valley would have a bright future of roaming possibilities.
