Naturescape Garden Opening Celebration

Naturescape Demonstration Garden opens with Alger Community Celebration July 12

Join us Saturday, July 12, 2014 from 11 am to 1 pm as the Alger community celebrates the grand opening of the Naturescape and Nectar Garden at Alger Community Hall, 18735 Parkview Lane, Alger.  The day’s events will feature a brief ceremony recognizing all the businesses and volunteers who helped make the garden dream a reality.

The ceremony will herald the unveiling of interpretive signs that will inspire visitors to use native plants in their own yards to help preserve habitat and keep our streams and rivers clean. Businesses who helped in the creation are Aulos Design by Ani Gurnee, Plantas Native, Asuza Farm and Garden, Skagit Soils, Northstar Stone and Landscaping Supply and Whatcom Farmers Co-op.

Garden tours will be available as well as games, music, baked goods for sale, educational displays, a wildlife costume parade, and spots for picnicking around the garden. Come early, stay late. The celebration is hosted by Alger Community Hall, Friday Creek Habitat Stewards, Skagit Conservation District and Chuckanut Transition.

The project was made possible by Friday Creek Habitat Stewards, a neighborhood volunteer group, who received at $7,500 grant from the Rose Foundation’s Puget Sound Grassroots Stewardship Fund in Spring 2013. The grant funded a multi-faceted stream and wildlife habitat enhancement demonstration site on Silver Creek at Alger Hall. The project, inspired by the volunteer group with support from the Alger Improvement Club, Skagit Conservation District, and other partners, includes incorporating specialty demonstration garden beds that illustrate how gardens beds can create healthy soil conditions, reduce maintenance, protect their neighborhood stream and add native plants that provide habitat for fish and wildlife, attracting birds, butterflies, and beneficial insects.

Garden design completion by Ani Gurnee of Aulos Design began in earnest following the grant award. Last year the work began when more than 25 volunteers arrived on a beautiful June 2013 Saturday to lay cardboard and move 50 yards of soil and 54 yards of mulch to create the garden beds.  In September, 10 volunteers appeared on a blustery, wet Saturday to install the native plants and pollinator plants.

This project was built on the success of the stream enhancement project conducted at the site in March 2012.  With support from Skagit County's NRSP program, Skagit Fisheries Enhancement Group, Alger Community Hall, Skagit Conservation District, Friday Creek Habitat Stewards helped clear the Silver Creek stream bank of blackberries and other invasives and replant with native plants.