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.