Tuesday, November 11, 2025
Philip Stielstra has three degrees — one in history, a second in engineering, and a master's in business administration. He never used them in his career at Boeing, and he’s not using them now, as he leads a nonprofit that plants California coast redwoods and sequoias here in Puget Sound country, including Thurston County.
“You don’t need degrees to love the natural world,” he says. And he is certainly a leading expert at loving the natural world.
He puts a big share of his love into action with a very specific strategy: Replanting giant trees that grew here before the last ice age. That ice age ended about 10,000 years ago. Before that deep ice covered our land, the Puget Sound climate had been warmer and wetter. It was a welcoming home for coast redwoods, and higher elevations in the nearby Cascades were perfect for giant sequoias. Today, as climate change warms both their California home and our Pacific Northwest, the sweet spot for these giant trees is moving north — and Stielstra and his colleagues are helping them move.
Soon after he retired in 2012, Stielstra linked up with the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive, a project founded by his friend David Milarch, a fellow tree lover and nurseryman in Detroit. Milarch, along with his arborist son, Jake, had begun collecting cuttings from California coast redwoods and sequoias, which grow further inland, mostly on the slopes of the Sierra Mountain range.
They methodically collected from the biggest, oldest trees in carefully mapped locations. They collected cuttings because growing from them enables production of trees genetically identical to the parent tree — the strongest, biggest, oldest on earth. Plants grown from seeds have genetic heritage from two parents.
Soon Milarch was shipping hundreds of sprouted trees to Stielstra, who worked to find homes for them. When that became overwhelming, Bob Barnes, a landscape architect with a small nursery in Olympia, began providing foster care for tiny trees. He still does. Some live in his nursery for two or three years before getting permanent homes. In that time, they go from a few inches to 6 feet.
This project exploded in 2018, when the Seattle Times ran a front-page story about Stielstra’s work. By 2019, a nonprofit called Propagation Nation had been founded, and a core of activists, including Bob and Holly Barnes, David Brown, and the late Ralph Munro and Dave Pearsall had pitched in. This year the nonprofit hired its first paid staff — a measure of its fast growth, widening impact, and expanding donor base.
People who care about climate change recognize that the fast growth, long life, and fire resistance of these giant trees makes them uniquely valuable. They absorb massive amounts of carbon dioxide and produce more oxygen than any other species on our planet.
And because they live for a thousand years or more, their carbon storage lasts much longer. Their long lives are aided by super thick bark that helps protect them from fire. Even when they do burn, their stumps usually resprout and grow fast from their surviving root systems.
Locally, the number of these trees in Thurston County multiplies with every passing year. Bob Barnes, David Brown (a retired doctor who also has a nursery) and others have been working with McLane Elementary School students for many years, planting native tree species, and more recently, redwoods and sequoias.
Propagation Nation has also distributed trees to local cities, tribal governments, conservation districts, and other schools and colleges.
On Nov. 1, there will be a tree seedling sale at the Olympia Unitarian Universalist Congregation from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tree starts can also be purchased on the Propagation Nation website.
For those eager to get outside and plant trees, there are two coming opportunities: The first is a work party to prepare ground for a Bob Barnes Legacy Grove of coastal redwoods on Oct. 25 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on OlyEcosystems land in West Olympia. The second is a tree planting on the Ralph Munro Trail on Nov. 10 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., starting at the Munro Meadow entrance at 11th Avenue NW and Delphi Road.
There’s a saying, of questionable origin, about how “a society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they will never sit in.”
We might wish that were true; seeing the best of our local old men planting trees hasn’t made our society great yet. Maybe we need to start younger, include women, and teach every child both how and why planting trees matters.
More informed voting would help too.
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hptrillium
What a wonderful thing to plant these sturdy trees that will grow to be huge in the future. Also we need to be stopping DNR from selling off the legacy trees to be cut down. Dave Upthegrove promised to save these trees during his election campaign for Lands Commissioner but now he has gone back on his promise. Find the complete story at the Legacy Forest Defense Fund. These trees are worth fighting for. When these trees and their complex ecosytems are gone, we may never regain forests like this that give us so much.
Saturday, October 18 Report this
Deskandchairs
And, no leaves to rake
Saturday, October 18 Report this
Annierae
What a wonderful mission. And a beautifully written article.
Saturday, October 18 Report this
griffithga
Thank you Jill. Also, please be aware that the Olympia Historical Society & Bigelow House Museum (OHS & BHM) is partnering with the City of Olympia Heritage Commission, Parks, Arts, and Recreation Department; and Armory Creative Arts Campus to host an event on November 8 from 2 to 4 pm at Madison Elementary School. We will be honoring Veterans as well as celebrating the living memorial represented by the Legion Way street tree canopy. We will be replanting at least one of the oaks recently lost and advocating for preserving and restoring this historic cultural landscape created to honor veterans of World War I. The Parks department will also be on hand to give out tree saplings for participants to take home and plant. See the JOLT calendar of events for more information.
Saturday, October 18 Report this
valerie
I grew up with a redwood tree in the front yard of our north Seattle home. It then was one of just a few in Seattle. Recently a development has gone into our Seattle yard & the redwood has been protected. The developers were not allowed to take it down. It's even protected by a fence!
Sunday, October 19 Report this
SecondOtter
I would like to see them plant not just redwoods and seqouias, but our local Oregon oak, the same species as the Mighty Meeker oak. We've saved that one...for the time being, until someone in the Port of Olympia tries again to destroy it (after all, those big commercial jets they're lengthening the Oly airport's runways for might hit it). I'd like to see more of our natives planted: Big leafed maples, madrones, oaks, even smaller ones like black hawthorns and beaked hazelnuts.
Monday, October 20 Report this