By Joe Scordino
July 27, 2026
Link to My Edmonds News article
If you’ve been in the ferry holding lanes lately or driven on Highway 104 just south of Dayton Street, you might have wondered what’s happening with all the orange buckets on the west side of the road. Well, what you’re seeing is a watering scheme, designed to ensure tree growth during the hot summer for the new trees planted by the Edmonds Marsh Volunteer Restoration Project.
If you take a closer look, you might also notice new growth on the taller alder trees and new 10-plus-foot willow trees growing along the bank of the newly reopened Shellabarger Creek, which flows south on the west side of the highway. And then, you might realize this improved landscape would not exist had it not been for dedicated community volunteers who willingly dredged through deep mud and dense invasive vegetation in order to restore a creek channel and a forested buffer/riparian zone free of invasive plant overgrowth. Volunteers actually removed over 900 feet of chain-link fence and four 10-yard dump truck loads of nightshade.
The Edmonds Marsh Volunteer Restoration Project, coordinated and supervised by the all-volunteer Edmonds Stream Team under an agreement with the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT), started as a four-year seasonal project to remove chain-link fencing enmeshed with bittersweet nightshade (a fast-growing invasive plant that killed trees and blocked creek flow) on both sides of Highway 104. After volunteers successfully achieved the project objectives of the first four-year WSDOT agreement (for example, a fully reopened creek channel and restored stream bank), the project is now under a second four-year WSDOT agreement to maintain the restored area by preventing invasive regrowth and enhancing tree growth.
At the outset of the project, some were skeptical that a community volunteer project (without grant funding or expensive consultants) could succeed. However, dedicated volunteers (with community donations for field gear and WSDOT assistance in trucking away tons of nightshade and removed chain-link fencing) proved them wrong. By year three of the seasonal volunteer work (July-September), the project achieved its objective to reopen a free-flowing creek for future salmon passage.
The project shifted in 2024 to riparian zone improvements involving stream bank restoration with wood chips and new trees as well as preventing nightshade regrowth and allowing “recovered” trees to repopulate. Volunteer enthusiasm wasn’t dampened by discontinued work in the City-owned portion of the marsh nor the expanded beaver dams in the middle of the marsh that compromised the project’s ecological goals for improved freshwater circulation.
The project is in its sixth year, with continued emphasis on maintaining and enhancing the restored site. Although dedicated volunteers are ready and willing to resume weekly work parties, the project is now in an “only-when-needed” approach if/when the Stream Team’s ongoing citizen science monitoring program identifies field work that can be safely accomplished by volunteers.
So, maybe those orange buckets along Highway 104 will also serve to remind everyone what a great community we have with so many people willing to help make “An Edmonds Kind of Day.”
Joe Scordino is project leader for the Edmonds Stream Team.