Seattle Parks and Recreation’s “Connecting Kids to Nature” program at Carkeek Park has won a $20,000 grant from the “Meet Me at the Park” campaign by the National Recreation and Park Association and The Walt Disney Company.

The $20,000 grant will help restore a vital environmental education connection trail between the salmon-bearing creek in Carkeek Park and the Viewlands Elementary School that sits adjacent to the park. The project will connect kids to nature by rebuilding and rerouting parts of the trail to provide safe, equitable access for the school and the surrounding community.

City Fruit is hosting the second annual Orchard & Harvest Tour from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 2. The self-guided tour of Seattle’s public orchards costs $10-$25 (buy tickets online), or it’s free with a membership to City Fruit.

Tour-goers can participate in orchard activities, sample apple varieties, learn the history behind some of Seattle’s oldest fruit trees, and speak with orchard advisers, volunteers, and staff to learn about gardening tips, orchard care, and see how all of the orchards maintain their trees year round.

The tour includes 12 public orchards, including Carkeek Park’s Piper’s Orchard, plus tour sponsors (Greenwood Hardware, Whole Foods Market and Full Tilt Ice Cream) which will have special treats and discounts for tour participants.

The Orchard & Harvest Tour gives Seattle residents the opportunity to explore Seattle’s urban canopy and learn more about how City Fruit works to preserve these historic orchards. The proceeds from ticket sales help support the continued maintenance and preservation of the orchards. To learn more about City Fruit’s efforts, please visit www.cityfruit.org.

City Fruit promotes the cultivation of urban fruit in order to nourish people, build community and protect the climate. We help tree owners grow healthy fruit, provide assistance in harvesting and preserving fruit, promote the sharing of extra fruit, and work to protect urban fruit trees.

Outdoor preschools opened at four Seattle Parks this month, including Carkeek Park. The preschools are run by Tiny Trees Preschool in a pilot program for affordable, nature-based preschool.

In an outdoor classroom, lessons have a natural magic: instead of counting marbles, children collect and count acorns; to learn colors, geometry and fine motor control, children use paintbrushes to spread pollen between flowers and record the color, shape and number of petals to share with the class; and with a pile of leaves and twigs, they build sculptures and art that reflect the wilds of their imagination.

At Tiny Trees, 52% of the incoming class receives financial assistance. At Carkeek Park, families who make less than $72,000 a year receive free tuition through the Seattle Preschool Program Pathways.

Tiny Trees Preschool keeps costs low by eliminating the cost of building, renovating and maintaining a child care facility. Instead of spending a huge amount on bricks and mortar the school spends it on hiring and supporting great teachers. The result is a preschool that costs 80% less to start and tuition prices that are 10 or 40% below market rate. Beginning September 12, 2016, Tiny Trees will operate schools at Camp Long in West Seattle, Carkeek Park in Northwest Seattle, John C. Little Park in the Rainier Valley and Jefferson Park on Beacon Hill.

The pilot agreement illustrates Seattle Parks and Recreation’s support for the city’s Preschool Program, approved by Seattle voters in 2014 to make preschool opportunities available for all Seattle 3- and 4-year-old children.

The Seattle Preschool Program aims to provide high quality early childhood education programs for 1,600 children a year by 2018. Tiny Trees Preschool is a provider for the Seattle Preschool Program – Pathways at Carkeek Park, and has two years to meet the quality standards for the Seattle Preschool Program.

To make sure families are prepared for a Seattle winter, Tiny Trees provides every child a free one-piece rain suit and boots from the Vancouver, WA based company Oakiwear. Children also use picnic shelters in heavy rain and there is an emergency shelter designated at each site in case of severe weather or emergency. Tiny Trees follows the Seattle Public Schools (SPS) calendar and is closed on SPS snow days.

Friends of Piper’s Orchard in Carkeek Park is hosting the 10th annual Festival of Fruit from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 24, at the Nancy Malmgren Environmental Center, 650 NW Carkeek Park Rd. Events include cider pressing and tasting, live music, an apple pie contest, activities for kids, and guided tours of the historic orchard.

Activities include:

• Apple pie contest: Bring a pie to enter in the contest between 10-10:30 a.m., then buy a piece of contest pie after the winners are announced.
• Help make fresh pressed cider.
• Apple identification: Bring apples from your home orchard for variety identification.
• Homemade pie: Donate homemade pies, which will then be sold, along with fresh warm cider, at Tillie’s Café, with proceeds supporting ongoing maintenance of the orchard.
• Orchard tours by volunteers who have helped restore the orchard.
• Taste heirloom apple varieties from the orchard and other sources.
• Kids’ crafts and activities.
• Live music during the festival.
• Master Gardener Clinic, with activities for adults and children.
• Carkeek Wildlife Habitat Garden tour.

The Friends of Piper’s Orchard is a group of dedicated volunteers who rescued the historic North Seattle orchard from invasive plants. The annual Festival of Fruit raises awareness and funds to help the volunteers ensure that the orchard, originally planted in the 1890s, will survive at least another 100 years.

The Festival is sponsored by Friends of Piper’s Orchard, Seattle Parks and Recreation, Carkeek Park Advisory Council, Seattle Tree Fruit Society and City Fruit.

Celebrate Carkeek Park’s historic Piper’s Orchard at the ninth annual Festival of Fruit from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 19. Events will include cider pressing and tasting, live music, an apple pie contest, activities for kids, and guided tours of the historic orchard.

The free event takes place at and around the Nancy Malmgren Environmental Center, 950 NW Carkeek Park Rd. (Please park below the learning center.)

• Informational presentations: Presentations on historic orchards and fruit varieties featuring Sam Benowitz (Raintree Nursery) and Adam Wargacki.
• Apple pie contest: Back by popular demand – bring a contest entry by 9:30 a.m. and buy a piece of contest pie after the winners are announced.
• Apple identification: Bring apples from your home orchard for variety identification.
• Fresh pressed cider: Visitors are encouraged to try out making cider the old-fashioned way, with a fresh cider press.
• Homemade pie: Visitors are welcome to donate homemade pies. Fresh warm cider and slices of pie will be available for a nominal cost, with proceeds to support ongoing maintenance of the orchard.
  · Live music: Talented musicians will provide live music during the festival.
• Orchard tours: Expert volunteers who have painstakingly restored the orchard will lead tours, pointing out the heirloom varieties that are going strong as well as younger trees and newly planted grape vines.
• Apple tasting: Visitors will have the chance to taste heirloom apple varieties that are grown in the orchard.
• Kids’ crafts: Little ones will enjoy organized arts and crafts activities.
• Wildlife habitat demonstration garden tour: Following presentations and the apple pie contest, a tour of the gardens near the Environmental Learning Center will be offered.

For more information, please call 206-784-0877 or visit www.pipersorchard.org.

The Friends of Piper’s Orchard is a group of dedicated volunteers who rediscovered and then rescued the historic North Seattle orchard from invasive plants. The annual Festival of Fruit raises awareness and funds to help the volunteers support the orchard, originally planted in the 1890s.

Seattle Parks and Recreation will name Carkeek Park’s Environmental Learning Center after longtime volunteer Nancy Malmgren, who has spent the last four decades helping to restore the park and Piper’s Creek watershed.

The Nancy Malmgren Environmental Center will be dedicated at 12 p.m. on Saturday, May 2, at 950 NW Carkeek Park Rd.

Nancy Malmgren first visited Carkeek Park in northwest Seattle in 1945 at the age of 16, and she’s maintained a strong connection to the park ever since. Ms. Malmgren’s daughter attended Carkeek Park’s annual Girl Scout Day Camp for six years and Nancy led different scout groups on expeditions throughout the park. In 1965, she began making restoration improvements to the area.

Ms. Malmgren has spent the last 40-plus years restoring Carkeek Park and the Piper’s Creek watershed. After securing funding from the Clean Water Act in 1979, Nancy and her husband Les started the Carkeek Watershed Community Action Project in partnership with Ted Mohldendorph. The watershed group organized educational, habitat restoration and outreach activities in the area and the Malmgrens often spent full work weeks reinforcing stream channels and creating sustainable paths for salmon. By the late 1980s, the couple’s efforts were repaid when hundreds of chum salmon returned to the stream.

Ms. Malmgren has received an Environmental Excellence Award and Denny Award from Seattle Parks and Recreation along with recognition from the Washington State Department of Ecology and the Washington State Ecological Commission.

The event will be part of the larger Pioneer and Garden Celebration hosted by the Carkeek Watershed Community Action Project from 10:30 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.

Please RSVP to Cheryl Eastberg at Cheryl.Eastberg@seattle.gov or 206-386-4381.

Carkeek Park’s 35th annual Earth Day Celebration is from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday.

The festivities officially begin at 10 a.m. with a Cub Scout flag ceremony.

From 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., you can join a STARS (Streams, Trails, and Reforestation Stewards) volunteer work party to help with hands-on trail maintenance and forest restoration. Gloves and training provided. For ages 13 and older.
From 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. you can help clean up the beach. (Sign-up next to the railroad overpass.)

From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., meet park volunteers and learn about year round volunteer opportunities in Carkeek Park. Or meet at Piper’s Orchard for a drop-in work party for weeding and mulching. (Bring gloves and small trowels.) Or visit and feed the chum salmon fry in the Imprint Pond; tour the demonstration gardens and visit with one of the stewards; or meet the “Heaven & Earth 7” temporary art installation curators and make your own art.

From 7:45-8:15 p.m., salmon fry will be released into Venema Creek at the Imprint Pond.

Visit the Carkeek Park Advisory Council Facebook page for updates or contact dkoon14@gmail.com.

Artists are requested to apply to become part of this year’s temporary outdoor art installation at Carkeek Park, just north of Greenwood. This year’s theme is “Propagation: Heaven & Earth VII.” Art will be in place from July 11 through Oct. 10.

In keeping with the spirit of the site, the organizers seek work that reflects an ongoing recognition of the precarious nature of the environment with attention to the metaphor of propagation, which is often associated with the production of plants (sowing seeds, grafting, and other forms of reproduction, multiplication, dispersal, pollination, etc.) but which can also be freely translated to reference human means of dissemination (such as internet memes and other forms of media transmittal). The organizers encourage experimental , kinetic, or interactive works that explore a broad range of contemporary interpretations of art and nature, including performance, new media, landscape interventions, installations, sound art, biomimicry, ephemeral work, and other interdisciplinary perspectives. We are particularly hopeful of proposals to project video into the urban forest from a secured location at the Park’s headquarters.

The Call is open to all artists (whether established or emerging), local, regional, national, or international. All work should have a minimal impact on the park and eventually leave “no trace” following removal.

Between 12 – 15 artists and/or artist teams will be selected from the pool of applicants and offered an honorarium of $300 – $700 depending on the proposal.

Deadline for final entries by midnight Saturday, May 2, 2015. Please send a check for a suggested $20 submission fee made out to Center for Environmental Art to: Carkeek Park Advisory Council, 950 NW Carkeek Park Rd., Seattle WA 98177. Please indicate “Heaven and Earth VII” on the check. The submission fee can be waived with a simple request to the curators and/or a sliding scale of paying what you can is perfectly acceptable.

Please send submissions to http://heavenandearthexhibition.org/submit/

The Friends of Piper’s Orchard is hosting the annual Festival of Fruit from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 13, at Carkeek Park‘s historic orchard. Events begin at Carkeek Park Environmental Learning Center, 950 NW Carkeek Park Rd. There will be a cider pressing and tasting, live music, activities for kids, and guided tours of the orchard.

All are welcome to join for:

• Informational presentations: Experts including the renowned Dr. Bob Norton, retired research scientist from WSU Extension in Mt. Vernon, and Shaun Shepherd from Portland’s Home Orchard Society will give talks on apple varieties and identification.
• Apple identification: Bring apples from your home orchard for variety identification.
• Fresh pressed cider: Visitors are encouraged to try out making cider the old-fashioned way, with a hand cranked cider press.
• Homemade pie: Visitors can donate homemade pies. Fresh warm cider and slices of homemade pie will be available for a nominal cost, with proceeds to support ongoing maintenance of the orchard.
• Orchard tours: Expert volunteers who have restored the orchard will lead tours, pointing out the heirloom varieties that are going strong as well as younger trees and newly planted grape vines.
• Apple Tasting: Visitors will have the chance to taste heirloom apple varieties that are grown in the orchard.
• Kids’ crafts: Little ones will enjoy organized arts and crafts activities.
• Cider making presentation: Watch and learn how to make cider during a presentation starting at 2:30 p.m.

The festival is free and open to the public. Visitors are encouraged to park below the learning center. Volunteers will be directing guests. For more information, please call 206-684-0877 or visit www.pipersorchard.org.

The Festival is sponsored by Friends of Piper’s Orchard, Seattle Parks and Recreation, Carkeek Park Advisory Council, Seattle Tree Fruit Society and City Fruit.