There is a group of citizens working to preserve
the unique habitat and cultural legacy of this historic park.

Friends of Seward Park
join us

The Friends of Seward Park meet on the 1st Saturday of most months at 9:30 - 11:00 am in the Seward Park Environmental and Audubon Center (SPEAC) near the park entrance.

The next Friends of Seward Park meeting will be April 7, 2012.

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Visit the Seward Park Centennial Website!

click here for Seward Park Centennial information

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First Saturday Walking Tours at Seward Park
Come learn about the history, geology, ecology, and restoration of Seward Park with Paul Talbert, president of the Friends of Seward Park. These free walking tours meet at 11:00 am on the 1st Saturday of the month outside the Seward Park Environmental and Audubon Center, and usually last about two hours and cover one or two miles. Dress for the weather. A water bottle, snack, and binoculars are always useful if you have them, but are not necessary.

April 7 – Torii and Hanami: Gate and Cherry Blossoms in Seward Park
A 25 foot tall torii (Shinto gate) stood on the isthmus of Seward Park for 50 years, and there is community interest in bringing it back. Why was it here? A gift of Japanese cherry trees in 1929 transformed Seward Park, Lake Washington Boulevard, and much of Seattle, leading eventually to the Seattle Cherry Blossom Festival. For over a thousand years, hanami (cherry blossom viewing) has been an important spring rite in Japan. We’ll explore the roles of the Great Kanto Earthquake, the NYK line, the London Naval Conference, the 1934 Golden Potlatch, and the American Bicentennial in the history of the Japanese cherries, lanterns, and torii in Seward Park. We’ll also pay a visit to our own native bitter cherry.

May 5 - Native Plant Appreciation Walk
Seward Park is best known for having the largest old growth Douglas-fir forest left in Seattle, but it also hosts lakeshore and marsh habitats, skunk cabbage wetlands, and a Garry oak grove with a small remnant of prairie. Several plants uncommon elsewhere in Seattle occur in Seward Park, such as Pacific yew, Pacific dogwood, poison-oak, snowbrush, red-stem Ceanothus, creeping snowberry, western goldenrod, and others. A major restoration effort is underway to re-connect the fragmented forest and to bring back the oak prairie, which now blooms with camas.

June 2 – Clark’s Prairie
The Garry oaks in Seward Park and Martha Washington Park are a remnant of Clark’s Prairie. Where was this prairie, why was it there, what happened to it, and who was Clark? We’ll explore Native American and settler history at Seward Park in a tale of butterflies and Bostonians, cattails and camas, fire and farming, lynchings and lost rivers, salmon and sawmills, lawsuits and liens, wapato and warfare. We’ll discuss Indian and Euro-American economies in the 19th century, Mercer girls and unwed mothers, Morningside Farm and Chink Hill, and find the secret identity of Lake John Cheshiahud.