Over two consecutive weekends, 250 children, parents and grandparents spent their Saturdays planting 5,000 native trees and shrubs to help restore salmon and wildlife habitat and help protect Tarboo-Dabob Bay.

The sixth annual Plant-A-Thon on Jan. 30 and Feb. 6 was a combination fundraiser and community service project for five schools: Quilcene Primary, Chimacum Pi Program, Sunfield Waldorf School in Port Hadlock, and Port Townsend’s Jefferson Community School and Swan School.

Participation expanded this year to include more schools from the south part of East Jefferson County, said Jude Rubin, stewardship director for the Northwest Watershed Institute of Port Townsend, who organizes the annual volunteer project.

It was largest volunteer planting ever in East Jefferson County, Rubin said.

The 316-acre Tarboo Wildlife Preserve, where the planting took place, is owned and managed by the institute and is permanently protected by a conservation easement held by the Jefferson Land Trust.

At the start of each day of planting, Rubin gathered volunteers into a circle and thanked participants, local business sponsors and the funding agencies that paid for the seedlings and the stream construction work along Tarboo Creek — the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

“The trees you plant here help the salmon, but they also help this wetland to filter and clean the water running downstream, so Dabob Bay and Puget Sound will be cleaner,” Rubin told the children.

The institute has worked with willing landowners and more than 30 organizations in the Tarboo watershed since 2002.

“The planting projects are an important part of NWI’s long-term effort to preserve and restore salmon and wildlife habitat from the headwaters of Tarboo Creek to Dabob Bay,” said Peter Bahls, institute director.

The group, and its partners, have fixed most barriers to fish passage, such as culverts under roads, and are restoring several miles of streams and wetlands in the Tarboo Valley, Bahls said.

Last summer, the institute installed logs in the creek to help form pools and riffles for salmon rearing and spawning.

Some logs were placed upright as standing snags for wildlife such as bald eagles and tree swallows that nest in the dead trees.

Tree planting is one of the last steps in the restoration process.

Of the 100,000 trees planted in the Tarboo Valley since 2004, some 19,000 — nearly 20 percent — were planted by volunteers.

In conjunction with the planting, students and parents sell tree certificates for $5 so that the trees can be planted in honor of friends, family, pets, teachers and favorite causes.

Cards are sent worldwide. This year, schools have raised more than $18,500 toward their collective goal of $20,000.

Honorary tree cards are still available for purchase for all participating schools at www.swanschool.net.

For more information about the Northwest Watershed Institute, see www.nwwatershed.org/.