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Grays Harbor residents celebrate Earth Day

Published 1:30 am Friday, April 24, 2026

By Andrea Watts The Daily World

Andrea Watts / The Daily World During the week of April 20, the city of Hoquiam planted three street trees along Sumner Avenue. On Earth Day, members of the Urban Forestry Board were in attendance for the planting of one of the trees. Assisting Public Works Superintendent Eric Lawrence and public works maintenance workers Parker McCormick and Jeffery Stubb with the planting was Owen Krause, granddaughter of Kurt Estes, an Urban Forestry board member.
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Andrea Watts / The Daily World

During the week of April 20, the city of Hoquiam planted three street trees along Sumner Avenue. On Earth Day, members of the Urban Forestry Board were in attendance for the planting of one of the trees. Assisting Public Works Superintendent Eric Lawrence and public works maintenance workers Parker McCormick and Jeffery Stubb with the planting was Owen Krause, granddaughter of Kurt Estes, an Urban Forestry board member.

Andrea Watts / The Daily World During the week of April 20, the city of Hoquiam planted three street trees along Sumner Avenue. On Earth Day, members of the Urban Forestry Board were in attendance for the planting of one of the trees. Assisting Public Works Superintendent Eric Lawrence and public works maintenance workers Parker McCormick and Jeffery Stubb with the planting was Owen Krause, granddaughter of Kurt Estes, an Urban Forestry board member.
Andrea Watts / The Daily World At Riverside Place Memory Care, residents and family members celebrated Earth Day by planting vegetable and flower seeds.
At Riverside Place Memory Care, residents and family members celebrated Earth Day by planting vegetable and flower seeds. Andrea Watts / The Daily World
Andrea Watts / The Daily World Also at Mill Creek Park, a Washington Conservation Corps crew with 10,000 Year Institute crew cleared large swaths of invasive blackberry, after which goats with House Goat Haven will browse the area.
At Mill Creek Park, Danika Davis and Andrew Will with the Grays Harbor Noxious Weed Control Board cleared out blackberry and planted native plants, such as bigleaf maple, native crab apple and western hemlock along the stream bank. Andrea Watts / The Daily World

Across the county, citizens turned out to participate in Earth Day activities, and in Grays Harbor County, residents found ways to celebrate.

At Riverside Place Memory Care in Hoquiam, residents, family members and community members had the opportunity to decorate pots, into which they could plant vegetable seeds or forget-me-not, a flower that was adopted in 2000 by the Alzheimer’s Disease International in 2000 as its official symbol.

This is the first year the community has held an Earth Day event. Karen Stutesman, the life enrichment coordinator, said her goal was to have the residents to interact with the growing process by having a good time plant and watching it grow. We want to “[create] the best moments we possibly can” for our residents, she said.

And outside on the patio, there is a raised garden bed where they are growing their own tomatoes.

At Mill Creek Park in Cosmopolis, Earth Day activities included planting native plants and clearing of invasives.

Marnie Schumacher and other community volunteers cleared invasives at the beginning of the walking path leading up to pond.

Grays Harbor students were the source of the sound of chainsaws throughout the morning as they bucked up red alder trees that had been felled because they posed a hazard for people walking along the trail. They were dying or dead, and the additional weight of the English ivy growing on them would bring them down.

Along Hoquiam’s Sumner Ave, the city planted three Autumn blaze maple trees during the week. In attendance for the planting on Earth Day were members of the Urban Forestry Board. The newly planted tree replaced one that had been removed due to being blown over. Brian Shay, the city administrator, said that since the city started its urban forestry program, 100 trees have been planted in city rights-of-way.

If residents want to plant a tree in the right-of-way by their house, they can purchase a tree from the approved tree list and the city will plant it at no cost to the homeowner.

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