More than 150 Edmonds Community College students, Learn and Serve Environmental Anthropology Field (LEAF) School students from Edmonds and Everett Community Colleges, Snohomish Tribe members and community members participated in an Earth Day clean-up project Friday at Gold Park in Lynnwood.

Volunteers spend part of their morning and afternoon removing invasive species and planting trees in the Stoljia Ali Ethnobotanical garden, which has been created within the park to showcase native plants and traditional uses.

The work at Gold Park is done on a quarterly basis, said Edmonds Community College Anthropology Chair Tom Murphy. Volunteers help to maintain the park on Make a Difference Day in October and on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in January.

“Our goal is to make this an outdoor learning place,” Murphy said.

The garden is a place to honor the ancient role of medicine and the Gold family, who played a major role in the area and who eventually sold the land to the city of Lynnwood, Murphy added.