Mercer Island

Tree Planting

Plant a Tree Today, Protect Tomorrow

Trees are more than just beautiful additions to landscapes. Trees improve air quality and reduce greenhouse gases. They shade creeks and streams, cooling water for threatened salmon. Trees also reduce erosion and filter pollutants, improving water quality and providing important wildlife habitat. Forests are crucial to the wellbeing of our communities, and it is our responsibility to help preserve them.

Planting trees is a fun and meaningful way to give back to your community and leave a legacy for future generations!

Get Involved! Support Tree Planting in the Mountains to Sound Greenway National Heritage Area: 

Volunteer

Volunteers play an essential role in helping us reach our habitat restoration goals, and the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust has year-round opportunities to support tree planting projects. Whether you’re removing non-native weeds, nurturing young native saplings in our nursery, mulching past planting sites, or actually digging and planting in the dirt – it’s all part of our comprehensive approach to habitat restoration, working across seasons to nurture and protect natural ecosystems.

Tree planting typically happens between October-December, and we hope you’ll consider coming out to volunteer during other times of the year as well to see your impact grow! 

Donate

We rely on support from individuals, corporate groups, and public funding sources to plant trees and keep them thriving into the future. Thanks to this investment from our community, we planted nearly 10,000 native trees and shrubs in 2024 and have planted more than 1 million trees throughout our 35-year history!  There’s still plenty more work to do – will you help us grow our impact in 2025? Every donation makes a difference: 

$25 = 1 tree
$100 = 4 trees
$500 = 20 trees
$1,000 = 40 trees!

Save the Date: Tree Planting Celebration!  

Save the date for the Greenway Trust’s annual Tree Planting Celebration on October 11, 2025 from 9am-12pm at Lake Sammamish State Park. After a Spring and Summer full of  in-stream restoration along Issaquah Creek, we are ready to plant up to 10,000 more trees and shrubs to continue supporting native riparian restoration efforts. Come and learn about the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust’s largest restoration project to date and plant some trees and shrubs along the way! Registration opening soon. 

Building on a long history of tree planting in Lake Sammamish State Park 

When working on big habitat restoration projects like our in-stream work in Issaquah Creek at Lake Sammamish State Park, volunteer efforts are particularly important to fulfill our goals. Since 2005, more than 15,000 people have volunteered over 62,000 hours towards our restoration projects, complementing the work of Greenway Trust staff and seasonal crews, State Parks staff, contractors, and many other partners. The transformation of Issaquah Creek is a testament to the positive impacts volunteers can make over time, and we’ll be involving even more volunteers in the coming years to plant 5,000+ more trees and help maintain the project to ensure its long-term success! Learn more about this project here.

Thank you to our long-time partner and supporter Carter Subaru, who has supported tree planting in the Greenway for more than 15 years, with nearly 250,000 trees planted! 


Be part of something bigger.
Be a Mountains to Sound Greenway volunteer!