Sculpture Park plants sequoias and redwoods

Posted November 28, 2022 at 4:45 pm by

Contributed photo

The San Juan Islands Sculp­ture Park shares news about some new, long-term addi­tions to their collection.

Prop­a­ga­tion­Na­tion and the San Juan Islands Sculp­ture Park have joined forces to plant six giant sequoias and four­teen coast red­wood trees for future gen­er­a­tions to enjoy and watch grow.

The sequoias are now about three feet tall and the red­woods rough­ly five feet tall. The sequoias were start­ed from seedlings and the red­woods were cloned from the largest and health­i­est trees available.

With the new plant­i­ngs, the Sculp­ture Park is now a repos­i­to­ry of crit­i­cal genet­ic infor­ma­tion that will not only enhance the beau­ty of the Park, but cre­ate an extend­ed habi­tat to mit­i­gate against the daunt­ing cli­mate chal­lenges fac­ing these unique tree species.

The trees can grow up to three feet annu­al­ly, so SJISP encour­ages vis­i­tors to take pho­tos with the new trees and vis­it often to com­pare their pho­tos with the trees’ growth over time.

We thank Philip Stiel­stra, pres­i­dent of Prop­a­ga­tion­Na­tion, whose vision as a cham­pi­on of red­woods and sequoias made the plant­i­ng at the Park pos­si­ble, and Bob Barnes, whose knowl­edge, exper­tise and enthu­si­asm turns lit­tle seedlings into the beau­ti­ful spec­i­mens now spread­ing their roots at the Park. We also thank Ted Lagreid for tak­ing the lead on this project after a vis­it to the SJISP, and bring­ing the trees and the vol­un­teers to help plant them.

San Juan Islands Sculp­ture Park is locat­ed next to Roche Har­bor on San Juan Island.

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Categories: Around Here
5 comments:

5 comments...

  1. This is a great thing! Have you noticed all the sequoia gigan­teum and sequoia sem­per­virens grow­ing many many places on this Island already? Most of those were from Green Tree Farm Nurs­ery which my Dad and I ran for a num­ber of years. He LOVED red­woods and gave many away to var­i­ous Islanders as well as sold them. Most of the sem­per­virens (Coast Red­wood) were sprout­ed from seeds (mid-70’s) that Dad got from El Palo Alto- an over 1,000 yr old red­wood that the city of Palo Alto,CA was named after. We are lucky to have some beau­ti­ful big red­woods here and the more the better!

    Comment by Margaret Bell on November 28, 2022 at 5:36 pm
  2. Mar­garet, could you tell us some of the island loca­tions of these trees and their approx­i­mate ages? I think I know some, but I’m not sure. Thanks.

    Comment by Louise Dustrude on November 28, 2022 at 8:43 pm
  3. What a great idea!

    Comment by Ann M White on November 29, 2022 at 6:07 am
  4. I appre­ci­ate the ongo­ing and ener­getic efforts to attract more peo­ple to the sculp­ture park. Plant­i­ng trees is always a good thing. I have spent a lot of time in both types of red­wood groves in Cal­i­for­nia and Ore­gon. Awe­some and cer­tain­ly icon­ic. We have a 25 foot Giant Sequoia on our land gift­ed to us about 11 years ago. Attrac­tive and dif­fer­ent for sure sur­round­ed by our high­ly dis­turbed nat­ur­al for­est type.
    But as always, with so many things here, unfound­ed hyper­bole strains creduli­ty. Any sug­ges­tion that these few plant­i­ngs, far out­side of nat­ur­al habi­tat and from very dif­fer­ent cli­mat­ic regimes, will be “repos­i­to­ries” of impor­tant gene pools or “extend red­wood habi­tat” in any way, for either species, is incon­se­quen­tial fan­ta­sy and, well “fake news”.

    Comment by Steve Ulvi on November 29, 2022 at 8:40 am
  5. What a won­der­ful project

    Comment by Janet Wright on December 2, 2022 at 9:18 am

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