Jenkins Creek Park
Jenkins Creek Park is a jewel of the City of Covington. Jenkins Creek, in the Soos Creek sub-watershed, feeds into the Green River. Water throughout this watershed is often too hot for fish and other wildlife in the crucial summer months.
Mid Sound is working with the City of Covington and Green River Coalition to plant trees along a spring-fed lake within the park.
In 2016, we partnered with Sound Salmon Solutions and a Restoration Ecology class of Green River College students to install willow and dogwood stakes. These stakes are sprouting nicely, and should grow quickly to shade the water. In 2018, we worked with the students from the Jenkins Creek Elementary School to plant trees as part of their Arbor Day Celebration. Interns from Green River College helped train the kids in proper planting techniques.
During the celebration, we were honored to have representatives from the Muckleshoot Tribal School. The students taught us about the many edible plants traditionally eaten by tribal people. Did you know, for instance, that one cup of stinging nettles has as much iron as 27 cups of spinach? Or that while traditionally people in this area ate over 300 types of foods, whereas people today eat an average of only 12? They also treated us to a demonstration of how camas bulbs have been dug for generations- while cautioning us about the dangers of death camas, its poisonous look-alike.
