Walley Creek is very different above and below Shores Drive.  Where the creek flows past the RDN GNPCC its course has been altered so that it's cut off from ground water infiltration by a clay liner.  To make stream flow even more challenging, the GNPCC removes ground water periodically to maintain the function of the settling tanks that treat the City's waste water.  Some ground water does make it into Walley Creek below the Shores Drive bridge, and we want to maintain these base flows for fish habitat.   

Our focus on the RDN property is to improve the riparian area by replacing invasive Himalayan blackberry with native plants, as we've done in Morningside Park.  Maintaining  shade and native plant composition gives the greatest chance of survival for fish and other animals that live in and around the creek. 

On March 1, a strong group of volunteers used loppers and mattocks to remove fresh growth in an area we cleared a year ago.  On March 3, a grade 7 class from École Hammond Bay moved soil and bark mulch into the polygons, and planted native ferns, salal,  Oregon grape, and Oceanspray.   It's exciting to continue working our way up the creek, involving great volunteers and students.

To date, our work removing invasive species has been focused on
reach 1 (from the beach at Nina's up to Morningside Drive) and
reach 2 (Morningside Park, between Morningside Drive and Shores Drive). 
Today we made our first foray into reach 3,
where the creek flows through the RDN GNPCC property. 
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The mouth of the culvert upstream of Shores Drive is completely overgrown with invasive Himalayan blackberry, as most disturbed, sunny spots are.  We used loppers and pickaxes to chop down the canes and dig out the roots, filling a large bin and opening up the space.  The plan is to mulch heavily with wood chips and plant quick-growing successional species - red osier dogwood and big leaf maple, followed by later succession species like Cedar and fir, either seeded from local species or planted intentionally.