Short Summary

Garber Park is a 13-acre wildland park owned by the City of Oakland located behind the Claremont Hotel in Claremont Canyon. Garber Park is home to significant stands of big-leaf maple, California buckeyes and regenerating coast live oak woodland and forest. The Garber Park Stewards vision is to safeguard the native wildland resources of Garber Park while reducing the risk of wildfire and improving the trail system.

Monday, May 8, 2017

Sweeping out the Broom, April, 2017


Smiling because after a full morning of broom searching this
is all they found!  
Can you ever say an area is "broom free?"  We think not, since French Broom seeds can remain in the soil for 40 years!  However, we have seen little broom in the past few years and have declared Garber about as Broom Free as an area can get.  But, we wanted to know just how much broom remains in the park, wanted to document it, and knew we had to keep on top of it each year or it could easily once again take over.  What to do?  Conduct a Workshop where participants would fan out across the park seeking broom, document results on a map so we could do this again next year and the next...
Searching in the Cow Parsnip Patch for broom - yea!  Little
found.  The Cow Parsnip showed its joy at the abundant
rain this year by growing 6 feet tall!


So on April 18 we began the first annual Broom Sweep.  We are happy to say we found only small patches of mostly small seedlings. It was Happiness all around - our hard work over the years has paid off - and where broom used to be - native ferns, grasses, wildflowers are now popping up.

Thanks, Lech, for a fun workshop.  And thanks everyone for your dedication to Garber's
Restoration!