Last month, the city of Sammamish recognized community member Jan Bird as its Volunteer of the Year at the city’s annual volunteer dinner.

The event recognized over 11,000 volunteer hours contributed by residents to the city over the course of the last year.

Bird expressed she wished the recognition came by way of a group award, noting much of her work was in groups with other volunteers. Bird volunteers with the Washington Native Plant Society, Sammamish Community Wildlife Habitat and with the Sammamish Stormwater Stewards, the latter a group which she attributes as the brainchild of cohort and fellow community volunteer, Sharon Steinbis.

“We’re all doing this together,” Bird said.

But Steinbis’ work didn’t go unnoticed. Last week, Steinbis was also recognized as the Washington Native Plant Society’s Steward of the Year for her volunteer work at Ebright Creek and Lancaster Ridge.

Steinbis said part of the inspiration for her volunteer work was to create habitat for local wildlife amid the development taking place. Seeing her completed work of restoring parkland is what keeps her coming back.

“It’s grassroots activism at its best,” Steinbis said. “It’s a thrill to come back and see, ‘Wow! There’s the asters that we planted. Look at them spread, they’re blooming!’ and knowing that’s providing habitat.”

For Bird, her work with native plants was inspired by her love of nature and helped by her added free time in retirement.

“I just look at my own backyard, where I’ve certified it as a wildlife habitat,” Bird said. “I’ve kept the native trees, I’ve put more native plants understory and all of a sudden, I see all these birds. I don’t know if it’s just because I’m retired and I have more time to look at that stuff, it just seems I’ve got more going on in my yard than I used to. It’s like, ‘If I can do that here, let’s see if we can do that [in the community].’”

Steinbis said one of the hurdles of doing restoration work can be the sheer labor of the task at hand, adding that local volunteer groups are always looking for more volunteers.

Still, both Bird and Steinbis commended the local Sammamish community for collectively being active on the volunteer front.

“We’ve got a really strong volunteer-city partnership,” Steinbis said. “I don’t know that that exists so much in other cities.”