PUBLIC LANDS -- Lake City High School students will be helping restore native plants to Blackwell Island Recreation Area this week in a project coordinated by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's Coeur d'Alene District.

Students in the school's advanced placement Environmental Science course helped sow the seeds in January for the new native plant and pollinator garden at the popular Lake Coeur d'Alene recreation site. 

BLM botanist LeAnn Abell and Jasmine Williams of the Coeur d’Alene Forest Nursery helped the students start a variety of native north Idaho plants such as blanket flower, Idaho fescue, and yarrow.  Through the winter, the students tended the small plants and prepared them for their future home at the native plant garden.

On Thursday, March 26, about 35 students from Lake City High, along with volunteers from Kootenai County Master Gardeners, the Idaho Native Plant Society, The Lands Council and the University of Idaho’s Confluence Project, will join for a day-long planting event.

A grant the WREN Foundation received from the Idaho Botanical Garden will help provide funding for interpretive signs at the area.  Benches and other amenities will be added later this spring.   

“The creation of this interpretive garden brings a long-time vision together”, said Abell, noting that some of the work started last summer. 

All shrubs and plants established in the garden will be representative of inland northwest species. 

Blackwell Island Recreation Site opens for the season on May 21.