Park(ing) Day, September 19

Check out Seattle's newest Parks!

Seattle is a city known for its parks and on September 19th , it had a whole lot more. National Park(ing) Day is when parking spots are turned into temporary public parks, with the goal of celebrating and promoting the need for more green space. This year new parks were springing up in over 70 cities around the country.

Seattle had 29 new parks throughout the City! From Columbia City to Capital Hill, Georgetown to Greenwood, White Center to West Seattle, people and communities came together to create parks that celebrated and highlighted the importance of green space in their neighborhood.

Seattle’s Park(ing) Day was brought to you by the Seattle reLeaf campaign, Seattle Parks Foundation, Feet First, Trust for Public Land and the ideas and efforts of all the park creators.

Trees of Seattle, Arthur Lee Jacobson 2nd edition 200

Seattle is known for its trees--there is no greater variety of trees in any other city. Trees permeate all aspects of the city; from the managed parklands of the Arboretum, to the tree-lined streets of South Park, into the front yards of Rainier Valley and throughout the acres of forested greenbelts.

Trees of Seattle-2nd Edition, by Arthur Lee Jacobson, is the most comprehensive resource about Seattle’s trees. It serves as an encyclopedia, catalog, and historical record for over 1100 of the different varieties of trees that call Seattle home. This book is filled with great descriptions, locations of specific specimens (for further acquaintance), scientific and common names, color plates and lots of references for further tree study. This is a dense book with a wealth of information to offer its readers, from novice to expert.

Arthur Lee Jacobson, is the author of 8 books about the trees and plants of Seattle. For more information, visit to his website.

Features

Cham Ba - In our efforts to engage the community in thinking and talking about trees we were fortunate to meet a very talented young man in West Seattle. Cham Ba, an active member of the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center community and student at the Arts & Academics Academy at Evergreen High School, agreed to share his creative spirit and his passion about trees with us.

About Cham: I was born in Vietnam in 1991, I moved over to the states when I was about 2 years old. I spent most of my childhood growing up in White Center, at site 2 in the housing projects. I got into poetry and rhyming in about the 3rd grade, when I grew a liking to the books of Dr. Seuss who became one of my major influences on rhyming.

Douglas Fir

Majestically Beautiful
  Warm and comforting
     In a cement filled land

Towering in Green
  Above industry crawl
       Resilient against urban sprawl
                 The developer’s saw

Tall and Majestic

Let us help them stand.

Our thanks to Ingraham High School neighbor Michele for submitting her poem!

Thorn to be Wild - Check out the student-directed film documenting the ongoing restoration of Seattle's largest forest. This project was produced by the Nature Consortium under the creative direction of local film maker Carey Christie with funding from the City.