By MARIANNE SORENSEN SCHOLL

Carkeek Park has been working to restore the salmon run on Piper's Creek for over a decade. It has now joined a broader movement to convince homeowners to help protect wildlife by changing the way they garden.

The Environmental Education Center, located at the entrance of the park, recently dedicated seven backyard habitat demonstration gardens. All seven contain native plants that require little water and provide food and habitat for birds and small mammals.

The garden project dates back to 1994 when Nancie Jaramillo, a natural resource specialist at the park, threw together a butterfly garden for an Earth Day celebration. Although the garden was intended to be temporary, it now provides a valuable year-round habitat for resident hummingbirds and other wildlife. It also inspired the park's staff to create additional gardens to show people how to conserve water and transform their yards into healthy habitats for birds and wildlife.

Creating backyard habitats or wildlife sanctuaries with plants native to a region is gaining popularity throughout the United States. This comes with the recognition that the loss of habitats is the greatest threat to wildlife of all kinds. The hope is that if birds and small mammals can find shelter, food and water in a patchwork of backyards across the nation, they will have a better chance of surviving as their natural habitats shrink.

Gardening with native plants in the Puget Sound region is important for another reason.

Native plants like the red currant or kinnkinnik don't require extra water and they thrive in our climate without fertilizers or other chemicals. Using them instead of thirsty exotic plants leaves more water in our rivers and keeps pollutants out of our streams. Both are crucial for Washington's salmon recovery efforts. "People don't connect salmon to planting a red currant," says Carkeek Park naturalist Terri Spencer, "but they should."

Planting more native trees, shrubs or groundcovers, all important elements of a habitat garden, also helps salmon by reducing urban runoff which pours silts and other pollutants into local streams, destroying valuable salmon habitat.

"If we can encourage everyone, especially in cities, to plant more and more vegetation, it will help wildlife and salmon," says Spencer. "We'll all have a much better quality of life, and so would the salmon."

Each of the lovely educational gardens has a different theme. A shady woodland garden to the west of the main building highlights the ferns, bleeding hearts and other Western Washington native plants the Environmental Education Center hopes to encourage in water-conscious gardens. There is also a garden of particularly drought-tolerant native plants for gardeners who are truly committed to cutting their water consumption.

The Washington Native Plant Society is responsible for another of the park's beautiful new gardens. This one is designed to appeal to the more knowledgeable plant lover, and it highlights less familiar native plants such as buffalo berry and fawn lily.

The most unusual garden was created by Jill Perry's third grade class at Viewlands Elementary School. It is an ethnobotany garden featuring plants used by Native Americans. "Ethnobotany" is the study of people's relationship to plants, and last spring the third graders planted 28 different species of plants once used in the Northwest for food, medicines and dyes for clothing. A guide to these plants and how they were used, along with information on the other demonstration gardens, is available at the Environmental Education Center.

A tour through the stunning gardens will convince almost any gardener of the value of native plants. The rich tapestry of complementing and contrasting plants not only serves a higher environmental purpose, it is truly a pleasure to look at.

Marianne Sorensen Scholl is a Crown Hill resident.