Interest in plants pays off for Spokane Scout

Boy Scout Michael Bageant was at the right place at the right time.

While researching a project to earn his Eagle Scout, the 15-year-old discovered a way to impact his own neighborhood.

About a mile from his home, Spokane County’s new 5-acre Browne Mountain storm water facility had no budget for ground cover.

“I always thought I wanted to do something with plants,” said Bageant, a freshman at Lewis and Clark High School. “And to make an impact on the environment right here, that was important to me.”

The facility, built in 2008, is north of 46th Avenue and east of Sumac Drive. It serves the Browne Mountain drainage sub-basin, a smaller drainage area within the Glenrose watershed in Spokane County.

“It was really cool,” said Spokane County storm water engineer Colleen Little, who worked with Bageant on his project. “He came to me just at the right time.”

Prior to meeting Bageant last March, Little visited the facility and discovered considerable soil erosion around a water sediment pond because of lack of plant material.

The ground cover proposed for the site was removed from the original design bid because it cost too much.

Choosing native plant material for the area required considerable research.

Little put Bageant in touch with two landscape architects, as well as area nurseries, who helped him select 13 plant varieties that met the county’s requirements.

There are no sprinklers or other irrigation in the natural area, so the plants needed to include drought-tolerant and water-loving varieties. Each plant needed to be low growing with a deep root base to prevent soil erosion. The plants chosen included monkey flower, creeping Oregon grape, long-leafed phlox, and Rocky Mountain iris.

After planning the details of the project, Bageant was ready to lead the planting expedition, scheduled for Aug. 13.

Two weeks prior to planting day, he visited the site and realized the soil in some areas was too dry to get a shovel into, much less plant. He accommodated this by moving plants closer to the water. He decreased the number of some species while increasing others.

A few days before planting day, it began to rain nonstop.

This left some of the areas selected for planting underwater. When he, his parents and volunteers arrived on Aug. 13, Bageant once more adjusted planting locations, moving some to higher ground.

“I had to make a lot of changes in the end,” he said.

He mapped out the locations for all 160 plants, clustering each species in a group of four or five plants. With more than 30 volunteers helping plant, he came up with a creative way to illustrate the location for each plant. He developed a coding system that marked the plantings with colored flags coordinated to the same color markings on a map.

Overall, he spent 159 hours completing the project without any out-of-pocket expenses. A Department of Ecology grant covered the $300 plant costs.

He received his Eagle Scout award on Feb. 13 during a ceremony at Hamblen Park Presbyterian Church.

“The most rewarding thing is seeing them actually work and grow,” he said.

“He did a really good job,” Little said.