Project Option 3
ESRM 100 I volunteered with the University of Washington Botanic Garden group this past Thursday November 17th from 10:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. The event took place at the Washington State Arboretum Park. Upon arrival I had no idea what to expect. I figured we would be pulling some small weeds or planting trees and flowers. This was not the case. I was surprised to find that our task was to dig up blackberry plants. I quickly noticed that these enormous prickly weeds were everywhere, almost completely taking over in certain areas in the park. I was intimidated at first in trying to tackle these weeds because I don’t have much arm strength. Even the woman showing us what to do had trouble digging one up.
Shovels and pitchforks were given to us as our tools. The shovels definitely were the way to go. It proved to be a strenuous job to dig these plants up because it was hard to navigate the area without getting pricked by the thorns, and the roots on most of them were thick and went into the dirt pretty deep. Some of the weeds were even “double rooters,” meaning they were rooted into the ground in two separate places. I would feel so accomplished after digging one up only to find, when I tugged on it to bring it to the pile, that it was rooted into the ground again somewhere else a few feet away. I eventually got the hang of digging the plants up and ended up accomplishing quite a lot with the group I was working with. The truck we were placing our pulled weeds in was overflowing because we had dug up so many, and that was only our group’s pile and there were three groups total. I feel that all of us volunteers that day were a lot of help, and the organization was very thankful afterwards for all of what we accomplished.
This UW Botanic Garden organization needed our help with this work because the blackberry plant is a highly invasive species that