Frogs and Friends!
Eco-Friendly Community on North Creek
near Bothell, Washington
Clearwater Commons Breaks Ground!
After four years of design and permitting, the Clearwater Commons is excited to announce that we have started site development! Check out the photo gallery for pictures as we progress through the project.
The commons is a unique “deep green” project in an environmentally sensitive area. We are the first project of its kind to use comprehensive low impact development methods, intentional community values, innovative green building techniques, and environmental improvements based on the restoration of North Creek, an important endangered salmon habitat.
We hope to be able to start house construction in the fall. Let us know if you are interested and want to have a site visit. We have several open house events scheduled where you can meet some of the commoners, tour the site and get answers to your questions.
Native Plants
Post by Lisa Port, Commons member and landscaping expert.
At the Clearwater Commons, Low-Impact Development community, we are planting native plants in our wetland mitigation and landscaped planting beds because they tend to be hardy in cold weather, tougher and more resistant in drought conditions, and they provide a stable, suitable diet and habitat for our native birds and mammals.
Native plants are relatively easy to acquire from reputable nurseries in our region or propagated on site. They can be planted in native soils and while many homeowners are encouraged to amend their gardens with compost, native plants do very well in undisturbed native soil without special amendments or accommodations. Native plants, once given an opportunity, will overtake invasive plant species. Invasive plants create unhealthy monocultures, limiting available food and habitat for animals in the area and creating dull, uninteresting landscapes.
Ribes sanguineum, Red Flowering Currant
When planted in the fall, natives take advantage of cool, wet, fall and winter seasons to expand their root structures, digging deep into the soil to establish what will become essential root stock to weather our typical summer drought season. As with any newly planted garden, supplemental water is necessary through the first year, especially for trees and shrubs, but native plants actually thrive without special coddling or attention, and usually without supplemental water after their first year in the ground.
Salmonberry flowers
Native plants such as Mahonia provide nectar for wintering hummingbirds even in the coldest of winters. Rushes and sedges along a stream bank or seasonal pond provide essential habitat for amphibians and insects, which also provides a food source for salmon. Diversity in a native plant garden also creates a diversity of food and habitat for many of our bird, mammal and raptor species, thus supporting a diverse and healthy eco-system from the ground up.
Site Construction and Crazy Thoughts
Post written by Lisa Port who is a Clearwater Commons member as well as a landscape designer and master gardener.Site construction at the Clearwater Commons is well underway. The pristine meadow of billowy seed heads flowing in the breeze and picturesque red barn in the background has been replaced by a lively scene of activity with deep trenches, heavy machinery, cowboy hardhats, and piles of upturned soil. 
Commons members Shawna, Tod, Tom and I have been meeting to discuss our next steps for landscaping the site once all the trucks and tractors have left the scene. One of our consultants, the Watershed Company along with my company, Banyon Tree Design Studio, constructed planting plans for areas of wetland mitigation and general landscaping that were approved with our Administrative Site Plan Permit Set many months ago—all good!
But now comes the time for the construction and installation of said plans, when mere lines on a piece of paper become reality in every aspect of the word. Although this is my favorite phase of any job—finally seeing the idea come to fruition!—big, round, juicy questions have come to our attention: - How do we manage the invasive reed canary grass that covers our site so that we can install over 1000 plants
- Where do we actually find 100 healthy salmonberry shrubs and 600 willow stakes
- Who is going to install all those plants
- And how pray tell, will we manage to weed and water it all once it is installed??!!
I get overwhelmed at the size of my current single-family lot in Seattle and the lack of time to deal with weeding, watering, pruning and harvesting, to shape it into a beautiful, tended space, and this creates a big question in me: How can I possibly move to this 7 + acre location full of weeds, invasive grasses and blackberry? As a Commons member I will be expected to contribute to the community on an ongoing basis in a landscape that is 65 times larger than the space I now struggle to spend even 1/10th of the required time in. What am I? Crazy?
I then recall the notion that every journey begins with a single step, and the age-old adage ‘One day at a time’ and I take the deep breath and pull out the bunch of reed canary roots and plant the tree. I know that one day the trees will be large enough to shade out the grass, thus rendering the insidious weed a piddily tangle of inconsequential stems and there will be joy and pleasure, gratitude and satisfaction, at being but a small part of something bigger than myself and helping to create a green, healthy space for families and individuals for many years to come.
Overwhelming? Yes. Alone? No. Crazy? Maybe just a little. :-)
Not so Common Holiday Party 2009
Well, we did it! We got together for a holiday party with no agenda other than to sustain ourselves and our relationships with each other. No weeding, planting, updates or decisions. Simply a group of friends and families gathered together for the holidays and to welcome in the New Year. We celebrated our first “Not so Common Holiday Party”.
The absence of a common house in the middle of winter didn’t put us off. We used the kitchen at the Clearwater School and with a few candles, flowers and food we were able to create a cozy cheerful environment.
It was warming to have a relaxed time together as a group and reflect on how far along we’ve come with the commons project and celebrate the growing relationships and deepening commitment to this joint venture we’re on.
In the time we’ve been meeting together as a group over the last few years, we’ve all faced various challenges either personally, within our immediate family or in the wider community. Having the perspective of the group moving through these twists and turns of life helps deepen our desire to build and live as a community.
Here’s to many good things for our community in 2010, the start of construction in Spring and many more gatherings both productive and otherwise. May we not forget to sustain ourselves as we forge ahead on our mission of sustainability.
Living at the Clearwater Commons
Our family moved to the Clearwater Commons on New Years Eve, 2007 and have now been living here at the Commons for 18 months. We remodeled the old farmhouse on the property and so are the first to move here. After living in Seattle for the past 20 years and in beautiful urban neighborhoods, I’m happy to report that I love living here.
Perhaps what I love the best is coming back from a run on the trail to North Creek Park and quickly looking up books for new birds or animals that have been discovered.
With all of the snow we had this winter (we get more than Seattle) we had our own “groomed” cross country ski track – complete with a jump or two.
It’s not often that you can ski right next to a creek surrounded by beautiful frozen snow.
I thought I would miss the easy access to Puget Sound Consumer Co-op and its great selection of organic foods – but I’ve found that Central Market in Mill Creek – 5 minutes away has almost an equally good selection of organic foods and generally at better prices.And our Commons chickens give us more eggs than we can eat!
I thought I would miss all of the urban amenities of music, plays, and great restaurants. (Ok, I do miss the restaurants in Seattle) But, frankly the trip into Seattle is only 20-25 minutes and actually is more accessible than the cross town commutes we had in Lake City. And, the Mill Creek Town Center is a pretty cool place with 23 restaurants, U.W. Bookstore, and many shops people pine for. You can check it out at:
http://www.millcreektowncenter.biz/
But I love that we can walk on a path all the way to Mill Creek and then up the North Creek trail that connects to the Interurban Trail which goes all the way to Everett and south to Seattle which connects to….the Burke Gilman, etc. You get the picture. Walking and biking are pretty great.
Alright, so what don’t I like. Well, this is the season that Reed Canary Grass LOVES. And it is a noxious weed that we are trying to contain in our stream restoration effort with Snohomish County. It grows so fast – seems like over an inch per day. And it is very difficult to keep mowed for our paths – especially when you use a scythe like I do.
Other annoying things include cleaning up for the teens that hang at the back of the property and managing our overflowing artisian well that provides us with terrible water that requires 5 levels of filtration. Can’t wait for the public water to get here!
Mostly, I look forward to the community. We regularly have kids up here from The Clearwater School and you can see the vision: Sitting by the campfire at the creek, using the sweat lodge, sports on our grass field, playing music, capture the flag, and other spontaneous games, or just relaxing and not having to go ANYWHERE else, because it is already here.
Tom with Son Nici runnin' the Commons!
Earth Day Cleanup Party
On Sunday, April 19, Clearwater Commons members, plus neighbors from a community across the street and families from The Clearwater School worked for two hours to pick up and dispose of large and small objects that were discarded along the approximately 1500 foot-long stretch of 194th St SE, the Commons' northern border. We had lovely Spring weather and enjoyed great conversations while we worked.
Among the larger objects collected were seven vehicle tires, a water heater, a car fender, a vehicle door and fender, two TVs (includng a 42"), a bicycle, fencing and large amounts of lumber.
Several children enthusiastically crawled under blackberry brambles and large bushes to retrieve hard-to-reach litter. A couple of them brought robot claw hand toys, which proved to be invaluable to kids and adults, especially in deeper pools of water in the low spots and thick bramble patches. 
We also removed a large pile of debris that someone dumped onto the Commmons property a few months ago. 
We filled a small dump truck to the top with garbage and recyclables. A big thank you to Odyssey Builders for lending us their truck. Without it, we would have had to round up a small fleet of pickup trucks to haul everything. Thanks also to Tom, Vera, Arlo and Eric for the unexpected glass-sorting job they had to do once they reached the dump.
After two hours of dirty, but satisfying work, we were all happy to sit down to a great potluck meal. We hope that our presence cleaning up the road and the sudden lack of litter will encourage travelers on the road to dispose of their trash more responsibly. In any case, we look forward to working with our neighbors on future efforts to clean and enhance our neighborhood.
The absence of a common house in the middle of winter didn’t put us off. We used the kitchen at the Clearwater School and with a few candles, flowers and food we were able to create a cozy cheerful environment.
In the time we’ve been meeting together as a group over the last few years, we’ve all faced various challenges either personally, within our immediate family or in the wider community. Having the perspective of the group moving through these twists and turns of life helps deepen our desire to build and live as a community.
