Scouts join neighbors in replanting of park | Community Spirit

“I can’t feel my feet,” exclaimed Ryan Lokrantz, a cub scout with Pack 207.

Even so, Lokrantz and other scouts joined a dozen neighbors at Autumn Ridge Park off NW Fieldstone Drive and NW 173rd Avenue in Beaverton on a blustery Saturday morning.  Temperatures were in the mid-30s.

With shovels in hand, they broke through the hard top soil to plant Oregon Grapes, sword ferns and Red Elderberry shrubs, as wells as cascaras and willows.

“I just thought that it’s time we did something about this,” says David Kamin, Vice Chair of the Five Oaks Triple Creek Neighborhood Association, one of 11 neighborhood committees in Beaverton.  The committees act as land use watch dogs to improve livability for residents in the area.

In November 2006, a windstorm blew down 40 Douglas Firs in Autumn Ridge Park.  It turns out, the firs were weakened by root rot, a fungus that infects the main roots of trees, rots them out and then grows 10 to 15 feet up their stems.  Even after the trees die, the fungus remains in the ground, making replanting of healthy Douglas Firs pointless.

With the fir canopy gone, blackberry and ivy, both invasive species, began to take over the forest. 

In 2007, Kamin approached the park district and the city of Beaverton about removing the blackberry and ivy plants and replanting the park.  Kamin, who has a degree in Forestry, wrote a grant for long-term management of the park and secured matching funds from the city.

“We’re in our third year of planting,” says Kamin.  “In a hundred years, we’ll have an oak-pine forest, not a heavy canopy of Douglas Firs.”

The planting continues next Saturday, March 5, at 9am.  Volunteers are welcomed.