Who Is Grow It Forward?

Grow it Forward was begun by retired environmental engineer, gardener, and biologist Jim Wright in 2019. Jim had last worked for NOAA Fisheries doing habitat restoration and fish passage engineering work.

While at NOAA, Jim was impressed by the many highly dedicated and professional organizations all over Washing state and beyond who take on the complicated and difficult tasks to restore endangered salmon species to local waters. They did this partly by identifying critical salmon habitats are so rare that they limit the ability of salmon to survive. There used to be ample amounts of such habitats along the banks and floodplains of rivers and streams. Over the last century though, these habitats were developed as farmland, or for residential and industrial use. The habitat restoration organizations find owners of parcels of such lands and seek permission to restore the vegetation and hydrology to more natural conditions. They remove structures and invasive plant species and re-plant with natives. The goal is to to restore enough native forest that provides the kind of riparian habitats needed by salmon during all parts of their life cycle.

A long time gardener, Jim knew many other gardeners from decades of hosting an annual “Plant Swap” in which gardeners got together each spring to swap plants. Why not harness the gardening skills of these people to grow some of the native tree and shrub seedlings that the habitat restoration organizations need for their work?

In the fall of 2019, Jim put out the idea for Grow it Forward to his gardener friends and got an enthusiastic response. Two habitat restoration organizations loved the idea and wanted to use these seedlings for their projects.

So, during the spring of 2020, in the middle of the corona virus pandemic, the first generation of Micro-Nurseries were brought to life by 23 gardeners spread around Seattle, each growing 100 tree seedlings, for a total of 2,300. We are currently tending this first generation and hoping to expand with another cohort of seedlings and new Micro-Nursery Volunteers in the spring of 2021.