The City of
Oakland's Earth Day activities advertised more than 90 sites for folks who
wanted to get outside and do some eco-friendly cleaning. Being a secluded
wildland Park, Garber has few mass attractions to offer--mostly at this time of
year, a whole bunch of weeds to pull. So the Garber Park Stewards were
delighted to see a motivated turnout from the immediate neighborhood who came
for the express purpose of pulling weeds. By the end of the session,
approximately noon, we could say that we cleaned it, we greened it, and from
the beginning, we meant it.
In the upper
portion of the restoration site at the Evergreen Entrance, we had left one bed
unscraped and unplanted with natives. We called this our control bed and
having had 14 months of undisturbed growing time, this area was a complete wall
of weeds. Since the ground was still wet we
decided to tackle it, not totally easy in view of the steep grade of the
hill. When we got into it we saw that Erhardta grass was the main
offender, but looking deeper we found thistles, broom, forget me nots, poison
hemlock, Himalayan blackberry, a few prunus sprouts and NOTHING
native--which pretty much proves the point: invasive weeds prevent the
establishment of native flora.
Of course
there were some weeds in our native beds as well, but the story there is very
good. Almost everything that we planted over the past year and a half is
thriving and reproducing. The native grasses are notable and will, with
very little maintenance, come to dominate the hillside over the next year or
two and hold it in place against inevitable erosion. Even the native
strawberries are fruiting. We were happy to see a large volunteer
population of Miner's lettuce in the lower beds, and to our surprise, the
reclusive Douglas Iris which we planted in December opened its blossom as the
sun shone on it towards noon. Our labors produced a number of bags
of weeds and a re-opened path to the upper beds. We also had an outpost worker
with a weed wrench who went to the higher, sunnier elevations and pulled the
several broom plants which were lurking in the sunny spots waiting to produce
seed.
A small contingent of Earth Day
workers got a special pass to avoid weed pulling and to help Bob Brodersen locate
and GPS map the oak forest in Garber. This important knowledge will
help us and guide us through the park for next week's Sudden Oak Death (SOD)
BLITZ. On the way to one of the remote sites, they flushed a red fox!!
who took off promptly after being disturbed. Undeterred, Bob and his
helpers finished the mapping. IF YOU WISH TO HELP OUT WITH COLLECTING
SAMPLES FOR THE BLITZ, CONTACT US RIGHT AWAY at garberparkstewards@gmail.com. We know that the
infection is present in Garber. It has the potential to kill a majority
of the oaks in Garber Park.
Click here for more pictures of Earthday in Garber
Click here for more pictures of Earthday in Garber
