Spring and Summer in the Park

Volunteers uncovered mature and native ferns from non-native and invasive ivy. They created buffer zones around the ferns to help them get more sunlight and be able to spread their fronds. On steep hillsides, these buffer zones help prevent potential erosion problems from happening. We uncovered the plants, while managing the soil stability. With this strategy, we hope to have a great transition from non-native to native plants on areas with steep hillsides.

The spring and summer are great seasons to visit Garber Park. The tall oak trees, maples, and buckeyes create a cool and refreshing environment where you can sit and enjoy the park. (Photo on the left is Wyllie, our stewardship lead, gazing at the tall trees while carrying a bag full of tools for our volunteer day). During these seasons we see many butterflies flittering among the horsetails, a few banana slugs crossing the main trails, and many birds chirping and swooping down to eat blackberries. As the spring changes to summer, we begin focusing our efforts towards helping make the park more fire-safe, by removing dead and dry debris and invasive plants before they go to seed.

We'd like to send a shout out to our volunteers who joined us for this part of the year and helped remove many invasive plants such as English Ivy, poison hemlock, thistles, ehrharta grasses, French broom, and more! Volunteers helped weed invasive thistles from around previously caged young oaks, cut up and dug up prickly invasive blackberry, and pulled long strands of invasive English ivy and Algerian ivy from many areas in the park (top photo).

We started the season by celebrating MLK Day of Service with a great volunteer event! We had many wonderful volunteers, neighbors, and friends, who joined us ready to tackle a large Eucalyptus branch that snapped from the top of a Eucalyptus tree. This was a day where we removed larger pieces of dry Eucalyptus bark, raked a good amount of fallen Eucalyptus leaves, and bagged as many pods and branches as possible in green waste bags. Volunteers also cut up larger branches and hauled them out of the park. It was definitely a team effort as Eucalyptus branches are quite heavy!

To the left is one of our volunteers who was carrying a larger piece of the fallen branch. (Center) Our volunteer coordinator Wyllie also carrying another larger piece of the fallen Eucalyptus branch. To the right is one of our returning volunteers bagging seed pods, leaves, and larger bark pieces from underneath a very large Eucalyptus tree.

Thank you to the City of Oakland for providing a large green waste bin for this event. It helped us remove a lot of the debris from the park. And, thanks to our very kind Garber Park neighbors, who continue volunteering to take some of our bags with their green waste on our regular volunteer days and on special events like these. Your support also helps us remove much of this debris off-site to help make Garber Park more fire-safe.

(Left: Volunteers of various ages collecting Eucalyptus pods, leaves, and bark pieces and bagging them for removal.)

Spring is also a season of growth, and our previously caged native plants had outgrown the cages we placed around them two years ago. Volunteers helped us remove a larger cage surrounding an area near the Evergreen Lane entrance of the park. This cage had been installed to help small seedlings and younger plants have a better chance of growing big and strong, without being munched on by deer or other larger wildlife in the park. In the photo below is our volunteer coordinator Wyllie with one of our volunteers (right), in the process of removing this big cage. Projects like these tend to be quite fun to work on as you get to see how fast native plants can grow when we give them a helping hand.

As the spring transformed into summer, we were also joined by new and returning volunteers who helped us cut back overgrown non-native and invasive acacia plants (photo below), and helped us restore a few sections of our trails.

Volunteers cut down acacia trees near Fern Glade, which opened up the area and allowed more sunlight to reach our native ferns growing nearby. We also cleared the main trails from invasive plants such as ivy, ehrharta grass, invasive blackberry, broom, and thistles. One of our projects also included cutting back ivy from a few of our larger trees growing near the trails (photo below). This climbing vine tends to take over native vegetation and also affects our native trees as it climbs them, blocks sunlight and competes for water and nutrients, and adds extra weight to their branches until they start to break. Thanks to our volunteers' hard work, we cut back a lot of this invasive ivy and hope to continue this work as fall approaches.

This is a fun activity for many folks who enjoy using shovels and other digging tools like the hori-hori. If you're interested in helping us continue this project, join us on our upcoming volunteer days. We will be continuing this work in the upcoming volunteer days. We look forward to meeting many of you and seeing our returning volunteers each time!

One of our returning volunteers, Mark, carrying a larger acacia tree and removing it off-site.

If you're unable to make it out to our Saturday workdays, you can always adopt-a-spot in Garber Park. Come out on a different day and bring your friends along with you. We will provide tools and gloves, and share with you some of the skills we've learned to continue stewarding the park. It's always great for us to meet new people and see our returning volunteers every time. Send us an email and we can get you started.

Wyllie carrying another Acacia tree out of Garber Park

Visit our Volunteer Opportunities page for our upcoming volunteer days.

Tour our Plant Highlights page to learn more about some of the plants growing in the park! 

Send us an email at gpstewards@gmail.com to join our newsletter and receive the upcoming event details.

As we start 2024 and look back at 2023!

 

Happy New Year!

2024 has arrived!

 

2023 saw Garber Park Stewards hold 27 volunteer days with 224 volunteers for a total of 702 hours in the park! Thank you all for a very successful year and we look forward to trying to exceed that number as our goal for this year, and I think we've had a pretty strong start.

 With the January rains and some winds we started this year by doing some trail work, uncaging some older oaks and caging some smaller oaks. If you walk up the Alvarado entrance of the park you'll notice that we cleared fallen Eucalyptus debris and mulched the trails to make for a more comfortable and accessible walking experience! This was all thanks to our regular volunteers and a lot of new faces when we had our MLK Day of Service! 

January 15th, MLK Day of Service

We started the day with a few goals in mind, but we were able to exceed those expectations with a total of 19 volunteers! We separated into two groups, one that was going to work on Eucalyptus removal and mulching up at the top of the Alvarado entrance, and another that was going to be focused on uncaging some oaks that had outgrown their cages and transfer them to some smaller baby oaks to give them a better chance to thrive in the park.

The Alvarado group ended up filling 21 green waste bags, which were generously removed by the City of Oakland, thank you Oakland! They then mulched all along the trail leading to the Horsetail Meadow, where they were also working to widen the path in a few places that it had started to narrow. It now feels very nice and is back to being a comfortable walk, where you don't have to worry about tripping on your feet!

Volunteers are working to increase the path width to make for a more comfortable walking experience through Horsetail Meadow. 

Our second crew started the morning by uncaging a group of oaks and other native plants near the Evergreen Lane entrance that had grown enough to not need the cage anymore. We then cut up this larger cage into sections big enough to use on a patch of smaller oak trees where a large oak tree had fallen the year before. We thought this would be a good activity to celebrate the holiday, by giving these baby oaks the chance to grow and live a full life and to be able to keep the legacy of the fallen oak going!

Volunteers work to remove the cage around a group of native plants that have outgrown the need for it. 

We put cages around smaller oaks and other native plants to help protect them from browsing by deer and other animals. Especially in drought years, deer will sometimes browse on the young fresh leaves of oaks, which can cause them to have stunted growths, but by caging we remove that potential limiting factor so they can have a chance to grow for their fullest. I have seen an oak tree that is five years old stay only a foot or two tall without being caged, but after being protected, grow to four or five feet within two years, to a height where we can remove the cage and not worry as much.

The oak caging team at the end of the day, having placed protection on 11 young oak trees.

Overall, we had an amazing January an are already at 75 hours of volunteer time for the year! We also wanted to highlight one of our native mollusks that came and joined the fun for a bit; the banana slug! Please watch your step in this wet weather, as they are out and about on the trails and we don't want any of these little creatures getting stepped on, so please watch your step on the trail and step carefully!

Banana Slugs (most likely Ariolimax columbianus) are roaming(gliding?) the trails of Garber Park! These large mollusks are coming out and enjoying the winter rains and the wet environment they bring! As you walk around the park, keep an eye out for these slugs that can grow up to 10" long, as you don't want to accidentally squish any!

Come join us on our upcoming Volunteer Days on the 1st and 3rd Saturday of the month as we continue restoring areas of Garber Park to be better suited for native species, and in doing so, creating a more fire safe park for everyone. 

If you'd like to volunteer with us visit our Volunteer Opportunities page for more information and if you'd like to join our mailing list please email Wyllie at gpstewards@gmail.com.     

Take a look at our past events

Fun Snapshots of our Restoration Efforts at Garber Park 

MLK Day of Service: Seeds of Hope

Plant Highlights at Garber Park 

August 2023 Volunteer Days!

 

June 2022 Volunteer Days

 

Spring Surprises!

As spring starts to turn into summer in the park, we start to see some of our plants go to seed and spread the next generation! The official start of summer this year is June 21st, so these were our last spring workdays of the year, which is bittersweet, as spring holds so much plant and people activity in the park! 

These last workdays were busy, from pulling invasive weeds, such as Ehrharta in Horsetail Meadow and clearing ivy in Fern Glade. Though we will be sad to see spring fade, we are excited to bring on the quieter, but just as important summer months. Before we move on to the next season, we'd like to share with you a nice returning surprise that brought delight to our volunteers during our workdays (Curious to know what it is? Find out below).

June 4th

We started our day off in the cool open area that is Horsetail Meadow. Here we worked to tackle the various weeds found in this wetland area. These included Ehrharta grass, Cape Ivy, Poison Hemlock, thistles, mustards, Himalayan Blackberry, and a few others. Weeds of all types and all difficulty levels, which is great as we have a varied volunteer base that includes some as young as four years old!

June 4th- Ruby and Sam (one of our youngest volunteers) share a teaching moment, while his mom helps weed around some Horsetail sprouts

One of our volunteer coordinators, Ruby, shared some tips and tricks with Sam, who, with his mom, are dedicated volunteers who love Garber Park and bring a lot of energy! During our volunteer day, some of our other volunteers tackled a patch of Ehrharta grass and thistles to open up space for some of our native grasses and allow our native population of Giant Horsetails to spread its rhizomes.

June 4th- Volunteers are pulling invasive weeds in Horsetail Meadows to help the natives

After two hours of weeding in this area, we transitioned to Fern Glade for the final hour, as a cool-down activity. Fern Glade is always exciting to work in, because it gives a good opportunity to see your impact as you uncover ferns hidden under the ivy. You may remember from January of us finding a certain salamander under the ivy, and with volunteers continuing to weed this area, another special native Ensatina was spotted! This was a great continuation of the year and it was great to see them still crawling around.

June 4th- Volunteers uncovered an Ensatina, under the ferns and ivy.

June 18th:
This was an exciting day for a scavenger hunt in Fern Glade! With our wonderful group of volunteers we searched under the ivy for native plants to uncover. The mat of ivy seems pretty dense but sometimes we find native plants, especially ferns in the most unexpected places, and we try to create a buffer from the ivy around them. This buffer serves a few different purposes; to make the area easily identifiable to revisit, to allow room for the plant to grow, and also allow an area for their spores to spread and get established.

June 18th- Volunteers are pulling ivy and non-native grasses in Fern Glade to uncover native plants.

When removing ivy we generally try to remove the pulled strands with bags to avoid leaving a pile of dead debris behind. One of our continuous focus' has been to select an established fern and create a small buffer in it's immediate area, so as to not create too big of a bare space. This technique has proven successful in Garber, as we have seen new baby ferns sprout around the uncovered ones after a few months, especially during the rainy season.

June 18th- Volunteers are pulling and bagging ivy and non-native grasses in Fern Glade to uncover native plants.

Overall, we had a few successful and satisfying spring workdays! We would like to thank all of our wonderful volunteers and the surrounding Garber Park community for helping us make this a long-term success!

Come join us on our upcoming Volunteer Days on the 1st and 3rd Saturday of the month as we continue restoring areas of Garber Park to be better suited for native species, and in doing so, creating a more fire safe park for everyone. 

If you'd like to volunteer with us visit our Volunteer Opportunities page for more information and if you'd like to join our mailing list please email Wyllie at gpstewards@gmail.com.     

If you're interested in seeing what's in bloom through the seasons at Garber Park, please take a look at our Plant Highlights Page!

Take a look at our past events

Fun Snapshots of our Restoration Efforts at Garber Park 

MLK Day of Service: Seeds of Hope

Plant Highlights at Garber Park 

 

May 2022 Volunteers Days!

 

Traveling Back in Time to May 2013

Our blog is a time capsule! Taking a look back at our previous blogs, a special moment popped up.

Where it all started

Garber Park has been transforming into a beautiful wildland ecosystem with diverse plant and animal species! We owe it to Shelagh Brodersen for starting the Garber Park Stewards in 2010 in an effort to make Garber into an more accessible public park where people could experience the beauty of a healthy native plant ecosystem and build community around the park. So many volunteer hours have been dedicated towards building and maintaining a trail system, allowing native plant communities to grow and expand, and building an amazing network of volunteers! 

Looking back we see some familiar faces and we are very thankful to continue seeing our long-term and new incoming stewards as well! One of our highlighted moments is the restoration of Fern Glade, where there is a continual effort to free the ferns from the invasive English ivy and ehrharta grass (as they are some of our most invasive plant species in that area). If you're a long time volunteer, you know how these plants are a constant effort to remove. This work is also very rewarding as the results are visible right away! With that, here are some photos that were dug from our Archive and some details as to what was happening on this very special day. 

May 2013 : Fern Glen Workshop and Restoration - A Huge Success!! 

"Come to Garber, walk the Sylvan Trail, and peek into our Wildlife Habitat Pile to see what creatures have made a home!"
Garber Park Blogpost 2013

 "Establishing the Fern Glade Restoration Site by freeing the ferns and other natives of Hedera (Ivy)"

Garber Park Blogpost 2013

Time-lapse Video of Fern Glade Restoration in 2013

May 2022 : We are continuing this work today - Returning Volunteers and long-term dedicated stewards arrived at Garber Park to continue the efforts that started what now is Garber Park. 

May 7th - Volunteers are pulling ivy and non-native grasses in Fern Glade.

Our 1st volunteer workday in May was a success! We continued our work in Fern Glade uncovering various native ferns and trilliums from invasive plants. Fern Glade is a special place to those involved with Garber as it's a site that you can see immediate results in, especially when removing invasive ivy around ferns. One of the delightful things about Fern Glade is hearing people get excited about finding previously hidden ferns as the ivy comes out!

May 7th - Volunteers are pulling ivy and non-native grasses in Fern Glade.

May 21st - Volunteers are clearing Eucalyptus and other debris.

Our second volunteer day, we dedicated it to removing flammable debris from around the Fireplace area. With the fire season starting earlier, we try to keep on top of some of our more concerning areas, such as near Fireplace Plaza, in which lots of flammable Eucalyptus debris builds up - in some places it accumulated over 4 inches! May was a lot of fun and had a lot of success, from clearing over 10 bags of debris to limiting the spread of invasive grasses in Fern Glade. We thank all Garber Park volunteers whose dedicated time has allowed for so much work and transformation to be made! Thank you!

Come join us on our upcoming Volunteer Days on the 1st and 3rd Saturday of the month as we continue restoring areas of Garber Park to be better suited for native species, and in doing so, creating a more fire safe park for everyone. 

If you'd like to volunteer with us visit our Volunteer Opportunities page for more information and if you'd like to join our mailing list please email Wyllie at gpstewards@gmail.com.     

If you're interested in seeing what's in bloom through the seasons at Garber Park, please take a look at our Plant Highlights Page!

Take a look at our past events

Fun Snapshots of our Restoration Efforts at Garber Park 
MLK Day of Service: Seeds of Hope
Plant Highlights at Garber Park 

 

April 2022 Volunteer Days!

Earth Month in April!

Four volunteer workdays, two workshops, one ceremony, and a full dumpster!  

Earth Month Efforts

We started off with a call to action as part of our Earth Month 1,2,3! Initiative. This encompassed our first three workdays of the month, in which we had multiple organizations join us and share in the work...and snacks! All of this effort payed off as we logged over 150 hours of volunteer time in April! 

April 2nd : Garber Park Stewards joined by the Cal Rotaract club

This amazing group helped clear debris left behind by the removal of a downed tree across the stairs to the Evergreen Lane entrance and an array of other activities. We started the day by eating snacks and learning about the interests of our volunteers and how, for many, it was their first time in Garber Park! It was so fun to get invigorated with everyone's passion as we went over the tasks before us. We separated into two groups, one to clear the debris on the stairs and the other to weed and clear around the Fireplace. 

The two groups made fast work of the objective and then we switched to mulching the trails and removing Eucalyptus debris. We were able to fill quite a few bags, and finished the day in a more relaxing, but rewarding ivy pulling and fern finding session in Fern Glade. Once everyone seemed satisfied, we went back for more snacks, debriefed, and a large group decided to go for a self-guided tour of their neighborhood park!

April 9th : Oaks, thistles, and trail maintenance!

For our second weekend we were joined by our dedicated UC Berkeley volunteers, who helped us mulch the top of the Loop Trail leading towards the switchbacks. Mulching makes the trails more resistant to erosion and makes it less slippery for hikers and runners who enjoy the park. Around one of the switchbacks we also had a struggling oak, in which volunteers helped us try and uncover the root crown, to allow for proper air circulation and lower the stress on the oak. Oaks like to have a slightly exposed root crown, but growing next to the trail means that it can become covered and compacted, which can stress the tree and may even lead to its eventual death, so uncovering these root bases is very helpful to a healthy oak woodland ecosystem. After uncovering the oak, we then moved on to tackle some thorny thistles in Horsetail Meadow. The volunteers took this on with glee, and made a quick and fun work of pulling hundreds of thistles!

April 16th : Welcome CAL Habitat club!

This week we were joined by the CAL Habitat club to continue with thistle removal, work on the trails near the Alvarado Road entrance, and finished the day with some more fern finding and ivy removal. 

We started by splitting into two groups, a trail group led by one of our long-time volunteers and trail coordinator, Alex, and another to tackle the thistles in Horsetail Meadow. Trail work is a critical component of a safe and usable Garber Park. The trail near the Alvarado Road entrance was crumbling in a few places, so we worked with a small but dedicated crew to shore up the sides to limit erosion and hold the trail in place. This seemed to have an immediate difference in creating a safer and more comfortable walk on the trail. 

Our other team was very gungho on removing thistles and pretty much cleared the open area in which they were sprouting! After that they moved to work on another invasive plant, English Ivy in Fern Glade. The experience was definitely rewarding for all, and we are happy they stuck it out through our initial wet weather conditions! 

April 23rd : Earth Month Cleanup!

The city of Oakland provides us bins sometimes so we can conduct large clean-ups of the park. With the bin we were able to remove all the previously cleared tree debris, and the Eucalyptus debris that volunteers had collected. We had a small but dedicated crew that allowed us to get the dumpster over 3/4 full! It was a large and momentous effort but well worth it, as it's one of the few times a year that we can remove a lot of debris quickly from the park, which really helps us lower the fire hazard and create a safer space for everyone. A special thank you to our long-time volunteer Ricardo, who worked with us and let us use his truck to haul down all the debris to the dumpster!

April 24th : Botanical Plant ID Walkthrough

We partnered with East Bay CNPS chapter member and long time steward, Janet Gawthrop, for a Botanical Walkthrough of the park. The goal was to help interested stewards learn a bit about plant identification and work to update the list of species found in Garber Park, which hasn't been updated since 2017. It was a deeply enlightening event where everyone was able to learn so much and we were also able to add a few native plants to the list that weren't previously recorded! Thank you Janet, and to everyone who joined!

April 30th : A Special Celebration for Shelagh Brodersen 

Founder, Garber Park Stewards 

To wrap up this amazing month, in partnership with the Claremont Canyon Conservancy, we held a special ceremony to honor one of our founders and sponsors, Shelagh Brodersen. Shelagh started the Stewards around 2010 with the purpose of opening up Garber Park for everyone by making it more accessible, promoting a healthy native plant ecosystem, and building a community around the park. 12 years later and those goals have been successful, with our wonderful trail system installed, our bustling native communities, and successful network of volunteers! With that in mind, a plaque was installed on the Fireplace, honoring Shelagh and her work with the Garber Park Stewards. A celebration was held and many long-time stewards gathered to acknowledge Shelagh and remember the hard work put into the park. The work isn't over, but Garber Park wouldn't be what it is today without her dedication and efforts - Thank you Shelagh! 

Another special event was a workshop by Lech Naumovich, titled, Building Community and Climate Resilience at Garber Park. Lech was also pivotal in forming a plan to restore the park, leading educational workshops, and educating volunteers. He was there to honor Shelagh and explain where Garber Park is heading, the things we can expect, and the actions we can take to help. It was a very nice and educational walk through parts of the park, and we were given a multi-part strategy to keep in mind.

Overall, we had a very bustling and fruitful Earth Month! Thank you to all our wonderful volunteers and the clubs that helped make this such a success! Garber Park is only made possible through the community's action and we thank you!

Come join us on our upcoming Volunteer Days on the 1st and 3rd Saturday of the month as we continue restoring areas of Garber Park to be better suited for native species, and in doing so, creating a more fire safe park for everyone. 

If you'd like to volunteer with us visit our Volunteer Opportunities page for more information and if you'd like to join our mailing list please email Wyllie at gpstewards@gmail.com.     

If you're interested in seeing what's in bloom through the seasons at Garber Park, please take a look at our Plant Highlights Page!

Take a look at our past events

Fun Snapshots of our Restoration Efforts at Garber Park 

MLK Day of Service: Seeds of Hope

Plant Highlights at Garber Park