Category Archives: Archive

Host a workshop in your neighborhood!

Oregon iris flowers in the EMSWCD demonstration yard

We are still looking for a few new groups to partner with so we can offer more free workshops! Our workshops teach gardening practices that reduce pollution and conserve water while saving time, money and energy. Give your neighbors the opportunity to learn about landscaping for clean water and healthy habitat – host a workshop!

We are especially seeking more workshop locations in Gresham and North/Northeast Portland.

Anyone can host, it’s easy! Here’s how it works:
An interested Host (that’s you!) invites us (EMSWCD) to provide a free workshop to your community. We manage registration and promotion, providing professional presenters, fliers and workbooks. You reserve or provide a workshop location, help get the word out by distributing our workshop fliers, and assist with day of workshop needs.

Learn more about hosting on our Host a Workshop page.

To schedule a workshop in your neighborhood, contact Katie Meckes at katie@emswcd.org or 503-935-5368. We look forward to partnering with you!

Headwaters Farm Tour on June 24th!

at Headwaters Farm in Orient, Oregon

Are you planning on applying to the Headwaters Farm Incubator Program (HIP) for the 2016 season? Or are you interested in learning more about how the East Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District supports the development of beginning farmers?

Either way, come join us for a tour of Headwaters Farm on Wednesday, June 24th at 6:30pm. We’ll discuss how the incubator program works, what the farm offers, how to apply, and other interesting topics relating to the intersection of stewardship and productive small-scale agriculture. Light refreshments will be provided!

Please RSVP to Rowan Steele, Headwaters Farm Program Manager
Phone: (503) 935-5355
Email: rowan@emswcd.org

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Announcing our 2015 Partners in Conservation grants!

The East Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District (EMSWCD) awards $739,322 through its 2015 Partners in Conservation (PIC) grants for conservation and environmental education projects.

We received 34 PIC applications this year, representing projects in each of five grant program areas: restoration and monitoring, stormwater management and urban landscaping, urban gardens and sustainable agriculture, environmental education, and equitable access to conservation benefits. The PIC grant program funds projects through a competitive process in order to support the efforts that are most closely aligned with the EMSWCD’s strategic priorities.

This year, the EMSWCD Board of Directors awarded 24 grants, including two multi-year PIC Plus grants. EMSWCD provides partial funding for most of these projects, with a minimum 1-1 match for all grant amounts over $10,000. EMSWCD’s PIC funding for 2015 will leverage more than $2 million in additional support! A wide variety of projects were funded this year, from a project to restore over 100 acres in the Mirror Lake floodplain to another project that will establish a new community garden at the Floyd Light Middle School in East Portland.

Read the full press release here (PDF), which includes the full list of 24 grant projects and details about each. Learn more about our annual and monthly grants here.

Nadaka Nature Park & Garden – Grand Opening Celebration

photo from the 2014 Nadaka Groundbreaking event

Join us to celebrate the official opening of Nadaka Nature Park & Garden in Gresham this Saturday, April 4th! The new park features community gardens, a nature-based play area and picnic shelter, as well as a 10-acre forest! You can meet Audubon Society of Portland’s education birds, learn from Slough School, and help spread seeds on the new eco-lawn. A nature play expert from ONPLAY will also be on hand to demonstrate the ways the nature play area can be used, and there will be refreshments and fun activities for the whole family! Watch the video below to learn more, and read more after the break.

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Soil school 2015

The health of your soil determines the health of everything growing in it – the food you eat and the crops you produce! Learn all about how to care for your soil at Soil School 2015! The event will be a day packed full of information for small farmers, landscapers, gardeners, grounds managers and anyone else who wants to improve their soil.

When: Saturday, April 4, from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. (Registration 8:00-8:30 a.m.)
Where: PCC Rock Creek Event Center, 17705 NW Springville Road, Portland
Cost: $30 per person or $50 for two people (Breakfast snacks and lunch are provided)
Register: Event page on wmswcd.org

Attendees will learn about soil structure, texture and composition. You’ll also learn about growing crops and gardens using beneficial insects and how to improve your soil through cover crops. One session will focus on organic weed control, the myths and methods. Expert speakers will talk about irrigation and how to make sure you’re watering your plants in the most efficient way as well as the recent movement to replace lawns with low-maintenance native groundcovers and grasses. Finally, we’ll have a session on slugs and snails, which ones you want to get rid of and the most effective way to control them. Read more →

Our 2015 Native Plant Sale

Customers pick up their plants on pickup day

Thank you for supporting our Native Plant Sale! We had a fantastic plant sale “pickup day” this last Saturday: hundreds of people picked up their plant orders, and now thousands of native plants are being planted in and around the District, which will help restore native habitat, support wildlife and lower outdoor water usage. We also want to thank our wonderful volunteers, who helped us package the plants, sort customer orders and distribute them on Saturday! Our Plant Sale would not have been possible without your efforts.

If you are still looking for more native plants, see our Local Sources of Native Plants page. There are several other nearby native plant sales coming soon!

If you were not able to pick up your plants on Saturday, we will process a refund for your order this week. You can email Alex Woolery, our Marketing and Media Specialist, or call him at (503) 935-5367, if you have any questions about your order. Thank you for supporting our Native Plant Sale!

Updates on the 2015 Native Plant Sale

Western bleeding heart (Dicentra formosa)

Updated at 5:00pm on January 23rd.

Thanks to some incredible enthusiasm for native plants, nearly half of the species in our Native Plant Sale are already out of stock! Similar to last year’s sale, we have seen a large number of early orders. Unlike last year, we have had about five times as many orders on the first day! While we like to see this kind of demand, we also wanted to give everybody a fair chance to order the plants they want. We have had many calls and emails asking if we can get more of these plants, and as a courtesy we would like to give some background on the Native Plant Sale for our visitors.

Unfortunately, we are not able to order more plants at this late stage. The plants that are being sold were ordered from the nurseries in the summer of 2014. Also, since we are running the sale at our District office, we can only handle and process so many orders (with the help of our wonderful volunteers!), and also have space limitations for the stored plants.

This year we are selling over 18,000 native plants – WOW! The demand has also risen since last year, and in just the first ten hours, we’ve seen nearly as many orders as last year’s entire sale! We apologize to anyone who did not get a chance to order the plants they want, but fear not! There are a number of native plant sales and nurseries where you can get many of the same plants. Check out our Local Sources of Native Plants page, which features eight other annual Native Plant Sales, as well as many low-cost retail and wholesale native plant suppliers! In many cases you can get groundcovers in 4-inch pots for prices very similar to ours.

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