March (Planting) Madness in Eugene

Our Eugene Team partnered with University of Oregon for a natural area planting project

This March, there was a truly exciting University of Oregon event—a natural area planting! No one loses when more than 50 students show up to plant in the riparian zone of the Willamette River.

“U of O has a huge presence here in Eugene,” says Eugene Director Erik Burke, “so it was great to be able to partner with them on this really cool project.”

The university owns a lot of land along the Willamette River, which presents a great opportunity to restore and expand the riparian forest along it. Riparian zones are the areas alongside a waterway where land and water interact. Riparian plants are critical to the health of a waterway as they prevent erosion, help break down pollutants from the water, and provide habitat for aquatic wildlife.

Students from environmental science, landscape architecture and other programs planted natives like red-flowering currant, twinberry and tall Oregon grape. They even transitioned from riparian forest to savannah, planting trees like ponderosa pine and Oregon white oak alongside wildflowers. This stretch of riparian forest grew from 30 feet wide to 50 feet wide in a single planting event.

“There’s not a lot of riparian forest left along the Willamette,” Erik says. “It’s really valuable to be able to make improvements to what we do have. We’re grateful to U of O for bringing this opportunity to us.”

We have plans to do three more of these natural area plantings with the University of Oregon in the next two years, giving these student volunteers more opportunity to make a positive impact on the Willamette River. Sounds like a slam dunk to us.