NOVA High School Landscape Renovation

A Project by UW's EHUF 481
(Field Practicum in Plant Management and Selection) Students, Fall 2001

Design Theme: Native Teaching Garden

This quarter, our students are working at NOVA High School. Their project site is on the western side of the school, between a sidewalk, a portable building, and a fence. The NOVA students and staff wanted us to use species native to Washington to create a teaching garden that would also provide habitat. Before we started, the site's vegetation consisted of turf, a sickly Doug-fir (Psuedotsuga menziesii), three oaks (Quercus sp.) and some overgrown and sickly daphne. The site receives full to moderate sun and has sandy soil that is well drained (except where extremely compacted). To increase diversity and habitat, our students decided to add mounded beds planted with a variety of native species. Stay tuned to learn more about this project as the quarter progresses.

Below are pictures of our site visits and weekly work parties. Click on any image to view a larger version of the picture.

Proposed site design

Our preliminary site visit

The site prior to renovation

Removing turf

The site following turf removal

Removing sickly Daphne sp.

Removing weeds to prepare the site for a planting mound

Building planting berms out of topsoil

Restorative pruning of existing plants

The sickly tree; note the severe leaning, which indicates that the roots have not established and spread throughout the soil

The roots of the removed tree; note that they never grew out of the original planting hole and that a healthy root mass would be much larger given the size of the tree

Digging planting holes with assistance from NOVA students

Removing container soil from roots prior to installing a tree

A plant with cleaned root mass, ready for installation

Planting trees

A newly installed tree

Separating and inspecting plant roots

Installing more plants

The newly planted mounds

The freshly mulched and completed site

Two of our NOVA student helpers

The UW students who worked on the site

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the following individuals and organizations for assisting us:

• John Hushagen and the Seattle Tree Preservation staff
  
• The staff and students at NOVA High School
  
• Mary Joe deBeck and Gretchen DeDecker from the Seattle School District
  
• Sky Nursery (especially Mary Heide)
  
• Sound Native Plants
  
• Preston Peightal and NW Washington Compost