Sally Kilburg, Michael Thilgen, and I are walking briskly down a road in Oakland’s Joaquin Miller Park when suddenly we come to a stop. Thilgen points to a cluster of plants by the side of the pavement and peers closely at the narrow green leaves and delicate flowers blooming brightly in the afternoon sun. It’s blue-eyed grass, a species that might have been growing in this same spot two hundred years ago. He leans down and gently touches one of the flowers. In a few months, he tells us, “We’ll come up here and gather a few hundred blue-eyed grass seeds.”
Normally, harvesting plant seeds from the parks would be illegal, but Thilgen has special permission from local officials; he’s already obtained starter material from dozens of the area’s native species. Thilgen and Kilburg are part of Friends of Sausal Creek, a group that hopes to establish a new native plant nursery just a few yards from where we’re standing. The blue-eyed grass seeds, along with some twenty thousand others grown at the new facility, will be used for a major creek restoration in East Oakland as well as for other similar projects throughout the city and nearby communities.
The Friends of Sausal Creek (FOSC) is one of the city’s oldest and most active restoration groups. Its volunteers have built a demonstration garden in Dimond Park, and restored one section of Sausal Creek. Now the group is asking the City Council to budget $75,000 for a new nursery where indigenous plants can be propagated.
The future nursery will occupy a relatively flat area, enclosed by a chain-link fence, not far from the Woodminster Amphitheater. Right now, the bowl-shaped field is choked with head-high weeds and assorted detritus, including a stack of redwood logs that have been dumped helter-skelter in one corner. Just outside the fence is a row of tall redwood trees, beyond which we can see the spires of the Mormon Temple.
Altogether, the new nursery will occupy about six thousand square feet. A lath-covered structure will be constructed, where shade-loving species can grow, along with a potting shed, storage building, and greenhouse. One part of the nursery will be left open for plants that need lots of sun. The group also wants to make the area attractive to visitors, with pathways to wander among the plants, and a circular seating area for school groups and seminars. “I envision it to be something like the Berkeley Rose Garden,” Thilgen says. “Having the fence already in place [the site most recently served as a city tree nursery] is an advantage. We already have protection against deer and two-legged creatures.”
FOSC plans to grow nearly fifty species of native plants. Some, such as monkeyflower, coast live oak, and coffeeberry, are found in commercial nurseries, but others, like creek parsley, cow parsnip, and hedge nettle are difficult to find. At least in the beginning, the group will focus on species indigenous to the Sausal Creek watershed itself, propagated from seeds and shoots gathered along its banks. Later it may begin growing other species for restoration efforts in different watersheds, though it doesn’t have any plans to sell plants directly to the public.
The group hopes to become a resource for similar efforts–in addition to actually growing plants for other groups, FOSC will be keeping careful track of what works and what doesn’t with regard to propagating natives. “We’ll be learning how to grow species that haven’t been commercially grown before,” Thilgen says. He says that the nursery will grow native oaks, and could become an important source for new trees in case Sudden Oak Death Syndrome, which has devastated trees in nearby counties, reaches Oakland.
FOSC has been operating a smaller nursery for the past two years, located at the county’s Camp Sweeney Juvenile Detention Center in San Leandro. The group had been hoping to establish a cooperative arrangement with the center, but the idea never really got off the ground. Moving to Joaquin Miller Park will allow for expansion of the nursery and save volunteers a twenty-mile round trip each time they need to fetch plants. It will also let the group host school visitors and do volunteer training. The volunteers hope that having visibility in a city park will encourage people’s curiosity about native gardening. It’s an interest that’s already growing, Kilburg says. In Oakland alone, there are native plant projects either planned or underway in Arroyo Viejo Park, Glen Echo Creek, Peralta Hacienda, and at the Woodminster Cascades. “The good news is that these projects are happening,” she says. “The bad news is that there aren’t enough plants to go around.”
The nursery was recently granted a conditional use permit by the city, and Thilgen hopes to quickly begin the weeding, grading, and irrigation work needed to get things started. If the council approves its $75,000 funding request, FOSC will begin raising an equal amount from private donors to cover the full construction costs. At first, the horticultural duties will be handled by volunteers, but in the not-too-distant future, the group wants to hire a supervisor and an education director, along with summer interns from local schools. He thinks that the fund-raising will go quickly. “This is a popular project. People tend to like what we’re doing,” he says. “It’s kind of mom and apple pie and ecology.”
Most of the plants FOSC grows will be returned to Dimond Canyon, just a mile or so from the new nursery. Next month, a contractor hired by the city will begin clearing a six-hundred-foot reach of Sausal Creek upstream from the Dimond Park recreation center, in preparation for a $700,000 restoration of the waterway and its riparian environment.
The first step will be to jackhammer a couple of vintage WPA crumbling concrete “drop structures,” which straighten the watercourse and create several small waterfalls along the creek. Allowing the stream to meander along a more natural course will hopefully result in fewer flooding problems during winter storms. The crews will also tear out most of the existing fauna, and dozens of large trees have been red-tagged, meaning that they will be removed or, in the case of several mature bay trees, pruned almost to the ground.
The result will be a dramatic change, and one that many visitors may find difficult to accept at first. The canyon is a popular place for hikers, dog walkers, and parents pushing baby strollers, and it’s a rare piece of open space in a neighborhood with few parks. Many folks come here because of its almost cathedral-like atmosphere, due to the shade from the trees, but that won’t be the case after the work is done.
“People are going to be shocked to begin with,” says Kilburg. The area will be closed from mid-July until late fall, after which visitors will see nearly bare ground and bright sunlight where a cool, shady stream bank used to be.
“It’s a challenging education issue for us,” adds volunteer Stuart Richardson. “What people can’t see looking at this is the habitat value.” The trees in the canyon are mostly second and third growth, and many are exotics that have spread from nearby backyards. Richardson points to a giant elm growing next to a ruined concrete foundation–the tree has sent out runners, which have sprouted into a long line of trees growing parallel to the stream. These in turn have squeezed out many oak seedlings, so cutting down the elm will give the native species a fresh start. It won’t be easy to watch, he admits sympathetically. “Look at the size of that tree. People will feel the loss.”
It will be especially difficult to explain the cutting of the bay trees, which are watershed natives. Thilgen, who is a consultant on the project in addition to his volunteer work, says that the work is necessary. “The understory is almost entirely exotic,” he says, noting that many of the current plants are shade-loving. But many of the natives, particularly dogwoods and willows, need full sun in order to get started. He points to stands of dogwoods in Dimond Park that volunteers planted a couple of years ago. The trees growing in a sunny location are full and tall. Another planting, under the shade of the bay trees, is scraggly and just a couple of feet tall. The willows, he notes, will play an important role in the success of the overall project: they help to stabilize the stream banks, keeping it from washing away when the water is high. Unlike the concrete, which crumbles and blocks the water, a willow seedling that is dislodged from the bank will often wash downstream and resprout when it hits land. The stumps of the bays will resprout, he says, but it will take several decades for them to regain their full size.
Richardson, like a lot of local residents, enjoys picking the fat, ripe fruit from the canyon’s Himalayan blackberry bushes every year, and he admits he’ll miss doing that when the bushes are pulled out. But replacing the bushes with a variety of berry species will be much better for the birds and other native fauna, he says. The different species of natives–California blackberry, gooseberry, pink currant, and more–will produce fruit from early spring until late fall, instead of all at once the way the Himalayan bushes currently do. Overall, the creek’s ecosystem will support many more birds, mammals, insects, and fish than it does now.
FOSC and the city held several workshops over the course of the two-year planning process in order to explain the plan, but Richardson expects people’s interest to pick up now that the trees have been posted. (He points out that many of the trees have yellow, not red, tags. A yellow tag indicates that a tree will not be cut.) One person has already seen signs urging residents to protest the tree-cutting, and FOSC plans to call another community meeting soon to discuss the project.
The revegetation will begin in the fall, around the start of the rainy season. After the city crews pull out, volunteers will begin hauling plants down from Joaquin Miller Park into the canyon. Richardson, a teacher at Fruitvale Elementary, is looking forward to the job. He says a three-foot-long branch from a willow tree can easily be planted in the ground, where it will take root in the damp soil. “I can teach a volunteer as young as three to do that,” he says.
Those three-year-olds will have the opportunity to watch a new ecosystem evolve and flourish in the years ahead. Right now, however, the Friends of Sausal Creek are gearing up for the task ahead. “We’re going to go full blast until all of our plants are planted,” says Thilgen.
“And we’re exhausted,” adds Kilburg with a chuckle.
