12th Annual Watershed Wide Event results!

This past Saturday (3/13/21) was Tryon Creek Watershed Council’s 12th Annual Watershed Wide Event! With several changes related to COVID precautions, we had a great turnout and got a lot of great work done! By the numbers, we had 104 volunteers plant 737 native plants, remove invasive species from 1.1 acre of natural areas, and 291 trees had English ivy vines removed, across 8 work parties. Read on for an overview from each work party location!

At Jackson Middle School, students joined Erik at the Westside Watershed Resource Center, planting 150 plants and mulching them as well as 250 feet of pathway along the SW corner of campus’s community pathway.

Lake Oswego High School sits along the border of Tryon Creek and Oswego Lake watersheds, which is a perfect opportunity for inter-watershed-council collaboration! Jack at Oswego Lake Watershed Council led Green Team students from LO & Lakeridge High Schools to remove invasives and plant 150 plants!

At Lewis & Clark College, our board member Qwynci Bowman led the charge! Qwynci is a L&C student representative on our board; because guests aren’t allowed on-campus due to COVID, Qwynci met ahead of time with West Multnomah SWCD staff in order to prepare for leading ivy removal with L&C students through the College Outdoors program. 

At Tryon Creek State Natural Area, Amy from Friends of Tryon Creek led volunteers in girdling 168 (!) trees of ivy. Girdling ivy means the vines will eventually die and fall off, alleviating excess weight on trunks that can weaken trees.

One of our board members’ homeschool pod of a few families worked together near the Iron Mountain trail at the Tryon Creek State Natural Area, ​where the group removed ivy from 60 trees and celebrated one of the kiddo’s birthday afterwards!

At Marshall Park, our work party was the first to break ground on a new construction project! Volunteers led by Maha Guliani planted along the new soft-surface trail connection to the Marshall Park main trail along SW 18 Place. The Frey Property was demolished in 2020 and graded for the purpose of planting and trail construction, and PP&R’s City Nature West trail construction is slated for 2022. Volunteers planted a diverse palette of shrubs (480!) and removed tree & ground ivy. 

At Boonesferry Terrace HOA, we worked to free shrubs from clematis vines, as well as removed Armenian blackberry and -carefully!- removed Lesser Celandine & Italian arum patches that have been closely monitored.

At Quail Park HOA, supported by Westside Watershed Resource Center, neighbors came out to remove ivy from a shared greenspace area that they plan to plant in the fall.

We also had at-home stewards remove both ground and tree ivy and work on other great stewardship efforts in the weeklong Watershed Wide side of things: Deer Creek neighbor Laura coordinated with a fellow watershed resident to transplant some cedar saplings to a fellow watershed resident’s property with more room for them to grow, and has created a brush fence with bigleaf maple prunings as the beginnings of a switchback path for better creek access (not just awesome-looking and biodegradable, this will hopefully reduce erosion too!). Other at-home stewards cited spending time together as their favorite part of volunteering from home – ivy pulling is indeed awesome quality time! 

Click here to see our full our photo album.

​Volunteers saw critters from bunnies to banana slugs, saw robins move into the spaces cleared-and-planted by volunteers, and soaked up the sun while having fun stewarding the watershed. We’re so deeply grateful for our partners and volunteers without whom this simply couldn’t happen! Thank you all!

Thanks to the Bureau of Environmental Services for funding TCWC’s Watershed Wide Event! Thanks also to our many partners: Portland Parks & Recreation, West Multnomah Soil & Water Conservation District, Westside Watershed Resource Center, Oswego Lake Watershed Council, Friends of Tryon Creek, Oregon Parks & Recreation District, Jackson Middle School, Lewis & Clark’s College Outdoors, Boonesferry Terrace HOA, Quail Park HOA, Bosky Dell Natives.