Planting a Therapeutic Native Meadow

Even in slushy conditions, volunteers showed up to Bybee Lakes Hope Center with inspiring attitudes

On Saturday February 15th, an inch of snow still covered the VetREST Victory Garden at the Bybee Lakes Hope Center. When it started raining, it seemed like one of those mornings when folks might decide to stay home, and who could blame them. Luckily the roads were clean and volunteers slowly but surely arrived, proving their commitment to planting native plants in a meadow once intended to be a prison yard.

The Bybee Lakes Hope Center building was originally meant to be a correctional facility, but that never came to be. Now it serves as a transitional housing facility in North Portland supporting people experiencing homelessness. Outside, there’s a five-acre Victory Garden run by VetREST. VetRESt helps military veterans address their challenges with a goal of finding peace from their hidden battles, providing farming and gardening opportunities and mentorship.

The five-acre Victory Garden has a young fruit orchard, a thriving vegetable garden, and a walking path with trees planted by Friends of Trees in 2021. On that Saturday in February, dozens and dozens of volunteers showed up to plant more than 800 native pollinator plants among the trees planted three years ago.

“Without that planting three years ago, we might not have this garden,” says Ron White of VetREST.

Volunteers spread compost on the sandy soil to give the plants nutrients. Steaming wheelbarrows crisscrossed the meadow, weaving between pods of plants and snowpeople constructed by some of the younger volunteers. The rain let up by midmorning and volunteers shed layers. Spirits were high and smiles abounded as the meadow gained plants one by one.

By the time we finished, enough snow had melted to reveal the mulch path that weaves through the meadow to the orchard, and it became easy to imagine taking a peaceful spring stroll among the milkweed, goldenrod, and Oregon grape.