By Sean Bunting, Bravo Team Instructor

Every year, Bravo Team donates time to an environmental project, giving something to the local community and strengthening the health of our local ecology. In years past, Bravo Team has helped build rain gardens or organized a bike-to-school day.

This year, Bravo Team joined forces with local tree-planting powerhouse Janet Welch. The project? To maintain and expand the fledgling Garry Oak groves on Indian Island and the planting of a new grove behind Blue Heron Middle School. Garry Oaks were once much more common in the Pacific Northwest but over time their numbers dwindled due to development and construction in the 1800s. Their use as a building material has lessened, but they are incredibly slow growing and slow propagators. Several groups and individuals in Puget Sound have dedicated themselves to the proliferation and preservation of these elegant trees.

Janet Welch has been planting and caring for these trees all over Puget Sound and gave her enthusiasm and guidance to the Team. First, on Indian Island, where we gave the existing saplings their new cages, new mulch, and weeded the immediate area around each oak. At the same time, we dug new homes for new trees and gave them a good start with fresh fertilizer and dirt from existing oak groves. This dirt is essential to the trees as it is filled with rhizomes and bacteria friendly to the trees. This adventure took us up and down the southern edge of the island on a frenetic tree-planting frenzy, with a very peaceful and reflective snack break sitting in the sun and watching the birds fly by.

Janet also joined us at Blue Heron Middle School to plant a grove of trees behind the school. This grove is now a collection of saplings inches tall, but in the future will be a graceful and protective outdoor classroom with a vaulted ceiling of leaves.

Bravo Team would like to (again) give Janet our gratitude and thanks for giving us this chance to put work into something that will benefit people and place for decades to come.