A Mountain Meadow Comes Back Into Its Own -- Volunteers Clear Weeds, Sow 6,300 Plants

ISSAQUAH

Penny Manning was raised on stories of the coal miners who played baseball in the early part of the century at the Redtown ballpark, a tiny open space in the forested wilds of Cougar Mountain.

Leading hikes through that wilderness as an adult, she saw the old field slowly disappearing, a victim not of encroaching development but of weeds.

"I watched that Scotch broom come up, and all of a sudden, the whole open space was being closed in," Manning recalls. She wanted to restore that patch of land to an open field once again, planting native flowers and grasses in place of the weeds.

Three years, 100 volunteers, 9,500 work hours and $11,500 in grant money later, her desire has been realized. At yesterday's "Return to Newcastle at Cougar Mountain," the Redtown Meadow Project opened to the public.

"The changes here are stunning," said Metropolitan King County Councilman Larry Phillips, who started one of the county grants that funded the project. "This meadow is going to benefit the park for the long term."

Chocolate lily, blue elderberry, California oatgrass, Idaho fescue and white yarrow are among the 69 species of flowers and grasses decorating the 2 1/2-acre meadow.

Volunteers replaced topsoil and cleared away alder, 400 Scotch-broom plants and more than 40 other kinds of invasive weeds to make room for the 6,300 plants - all naturally occurring in Western Washington - that can now be seen up close on the wood-chip trails that wind through the meadow.

"It's so nice to look at it and say, `I raised those babies from seeds,' " says Carol Burton, a project volunteer and biology instructor at Bellevue Community College. "And this is an important ecosystem in this area - we weren't just all trees to the coast."

"This is Western Washington as it used to be," agrees Harvey Manning, Penny's father and author of several Northwest trail guides. The senior Manning was a major force in the establishment of Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park, "but this has all taken place without me," he says of the meadow.

"I can just sit back and admire what's in bloom."

But not Penny Manning, who even at the opening ceremony was tearing out weeds. "We're never going to be done with this," she says. "It's a living thing, and it's always going to grow."

Janet Burkitt's phone message number is 206-515-5689. Her e-mail address is: jbur-new@seatimes.com