SEQUIM — Few projects in the spirit of Earth Day rival that of the Sequim Garry oak restoration effort on 20 acres in the city’s northeastern reach.
The project to restore the native oaks to the site uses drip irrigation, an efficient way to water vegetation, with water that the city reclaims from its wastewater treatment plant, giving it a second chance to benefit Mother Earth.
New forest envisioned
Retired state wildlife biologist Bill Wood envisions that one day a new oak forest of 2,000 trees will replace some of those leveled over the past 100 years to make way for farmland and pastures.
He imagines nearby mature oaks that were left undisturbed on the northern slopes above the Sequim prairie overlooking the younger trees.
He had thought the project, which can be found six-tenths of a mile north on North Rhodefer Road from West Sequim Bay Road, would be farther along by now.
“I thought I’d be doing something entirely different” at this point, he said, in answer to a question.
The 8-year-old project has 12 volunteers, and they need help, he said.
3,000 volunteer hours
“We are approaching 3,000 hours in volunteer time,” Wood said, as he stood among the saplings of varying sizes covered carefully in “browse protectors,” metal-and-netting cages to deter hungry deer.
Each tree has to be weeded by hand, which is labor intensive.
Plastic tubes around the tiny trees protect them from rodents.
“It’s going to take years of devoted effort,” said Alice Derry, a poet and retired Peninsula College English professor who is one of the newer volunteers to join the restoration effort.
Years of devoted effort
She began helping to weed and fertilize the trees after reading about the project a year ago in the Peninsula Daily News.
Derry and Wood — who, among other volunteers, have taken acorns home to sprout in pots and later plant — said they are part of a statewide movement to restore and protect the Garry oak. Oak Harbor on northern Whidbey Island was named for the Garry oak and actively protects the tree.
Garry oaks have historically grown in a coastal swath that extends from southern British Columbia south though Washington and Oregon to parts of Northern California.
The project was sanctioned by the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, which owns the land the trees grow on.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
