From natural resources such as Peter Point, to cultural resources such as the “O” Open Space for Arts and Community, to green living resources such as Mariposa Gardens, the newly completed online version of the Vashon Green Map at www.socialecologyvashon.org can help direct those who need information. It may also lead to some surprising discoveries about the Island.

A green map marks a community’s natural, cultural and sustainable resources on a map of the area.

Thanks to the dedicated work of program director Annie Brulé, software consultant Kris Bates and volunteers Deborah Perpetua, Felicia Saathoff and Joe Taskey, the online Green Map is complete. It’s the culmination of the second phase of the greenmapping program begun by Vashon’s Social Ecology Education and Demonstration School (SEEDS).

The program started with a workshop on greenmapping in May of last year led by Beth Ferguson, creator of widely used green maps in Victoria, B.C., and in Cuba. Ferguson worked with Wendy Brawer, who developed the Green Map approach in New York City in the early 1990s. Green Map System uses a set of universally recognized icons that have been developed collaboratively since 1995, and green maps are now active in 475 cities, villages and neighborhoods in 54 countries.

SEEDS began its first phase of the Vashon Greenmapping Program on Saturday, Aug. 23, 2008, at the Farmers Market on the Village Green.

For the next several weeks we invited input by means of an interactive display that explained the concept and goals of greenmapping, and asked visitors to the green map booth to nominate current ecological and culturally significant resources on Vashon, as well as green sites or projects they would like to see in the future. Many people stopped by to help us create a map that encourages an ecologically wise and sustainable future for the Island.

The online map shows the nominated sites in three primary categories: a Culture map, a Nature map and a Sustainable Living map. Text describes how the maps have been created, and pop-up information accompanied in most cases by photographs appears as your cursor hovers over particular icons.

The online maps are interactive and open to many possible uses. One suggestion has been to create a sub-map of land available on Vashon for farming/gardening for those who wish to farm or garden but lack access to land. As the newly formed Food Security Working Group develops more information on this topic, we can ask our map administrators to create such a sub-map.

A key feature of the interactive online map that is coming soon will be the ability for site visitors to nominate both sites that already exist on Vashon (but do not yet appear on the online map), and sites they wish to see on Vashon in the future. As with the Visioning Map at our Green Map booth at the Saturday Farmers Market, this feature will help us gather input to design a map that will represent a community-created vision of a greener future.

The online maps are substantially filled in with nominated sites, but we need help in some cases with more information about certain sites.

We plan to be out again at the Farmers Market in early May; stop by and help us fill in the gaps with missing information or with missing sites.

You can also help us with donations to offset printing and design costs for phase three of the program: producing and printing a hard-copy Green Map of Vashon.

When we have found sufficient community support and sponsorship to print the physical Vashon Green Map, we plan to hold a public festival/release party.

Will this be the end of the SEEDS Vashon Greenmapping Program? No, it will be the beginning. We will organize more events to celebrate various sites we want to honor and preserve on Vashon, and we will take the map to planning meetings as a means of showing support for the sites that don’t yet exist but that many indicate they would like to see on Vashon, to build community awareness and participation toward a sustainable future.

— Bob Spivey is one of the founders and board members of SEEDS.

Greenmapping

For more information on greenmapping in general, visit www.GreenMap.org. For more information on the SEEDS Vashon Greenmapping Program, or to volunteer, contact Bob Spivey at (206) 949-4786, bobespivey@gmail.com or visit the SEEDS Web site at socialecologyvashon.org.