GARBER PARK SPECIAL EVENT

GARBER PARK SPECIAL EVENT--TUESDAY JUNE 21 -  10 AM to 1 PM

The Garber Park Stewards are pleased to present the first of what we hope will be many onsite workshops that explore and advance the overall project of wildland restoration at the urban/wildland interface.  We invite you to attend!

Seed Collection and Passive Restoration Workshop

Instructor: Lech Naumovich, Golden Hour Restoration Institute

Seed collection and identification techniques will be the focus of this workshop including plants of bay-oak woodland and big-leaf maple forest vegetation types. Workshop is appropriate for people of all botanical and restoration inclinations and skill levels.

This workshop will highlight the ongoing restoration efforts in Garber Park with an emphasis on "assisted dispersal", a technique that moves seed from native plants located in one portion of the worksite to another area where the plants historically occurred. 

Meet at the Evergreen entrance.  Expect this workshop to run 3-4 hours so bring snacks, water, and workboots to help the restoration effort.

For Question or more information contact Shelagh at garberparkstewards@gmail.com

MAY WORK DAY--CLEANING UP FOR A DRY SUMMER IN GARBER PARK

Before & After














Close Work in Bed One


The May 21st agenda for Garber Park Stewards' work day concentrated almost entirely on preparing the Evergreen entrance restoration beds for the approaching conditions of summer. Since everything that we planted in February is thriving, the apparent challenge was to rid the beds of invasives while they were small and easily removed. Just beyond the boundaries of the beds, a lot of weeds and invasives are springing up; our main charge however is to maintain an environment within the boundaries in which our natives can freely establish themselves.
Looking at the problem this way, the outstanding intruder was Ehrharta grass. If this energetic plant were allowed to mature within the beds, it would overwhelm our natives and limit or destroy their progress toward natural reproduction.
Removing hundreds of tiny shoots is close and tedious work. Our great volunteers, more accustomed to the rigors of blackberry hacking, nevertheless threw themselves into the task at hand, even on the 80% slope of Bed 1 at the top of the hillside.
As the before and after photos of our wood fern in Bed 3 demonstrate, we cleaned out the beds. Of course, we will have to return to this task probably in the fall. A few repetitions will curtail the invasion of Ehrharta grass.
We even had a little time left over to enjoy the special triumphs of mid-May, in particular, our native strawberries in Bed 4 below the path. If you look closely at the photo below, you will see that the berries are just beginning to ripen.


Mary Millman
Friend of Garber 2

Spring Photo Tour

Take a slideshow tour of Garber Park to experience the beauty of the park in Spring. It’s now mid-May and the rains have abated and it’s beginning to feel like Summer. The only order and structure to the pictures is that we tried to present them from early Spring when the buds on the Big Leaf Maples and California Buckeyes were just beginning to emerge to late Spring where Garber and all its greenery is on full display.

We hope the pictures will entice you into Garber Park before the green grass begins to change to brown and the Spring flowers go to seed.

The Garber Park Stewards

May Flower - Cow Parsnip

The so-called "Common" Cowparsnip (Heracleum maximum)--anything but

common--is Garber Park's Flower of the Month for May.  Anyone who

walks in the Park has come upon this energetic late spring perennial

herb with mild astonishment because of its unique stature.  It comes to mind that this plant might have been a giraffe in a previous life.

Native to California, documented in almost every county, occurring in

many other locations across the United States, when Common Cowparsnip

is racing to bloom--in Garber, late April and May--it steals the show

from any other botanic rivals. Deep green

leaves, elongated stalk, and alluring white flowers, shortly to be

seeds, distinguish it from all others.

You will find Common Cowparsnip in many spots on the Loop Trail and on

the several spurs, especially the one that leads to Rispin Lane.  May

is the month to meet it in its best form. 

For more pictures of Cow Parsnip in Garber Park Click Here

A New Feature - Flower of the Month

With April's "Flower of the Month"--Giant Vetch--we are presenting the first of a series of feature articles that look a little closer at Garber Park and its many wildland treasures.  We will select a native flower that is prominent in a particular month, that you might easily see from the Loop Trail, and that has ecologic significance both for Garber Park and for wildland on the East Bay ridge in general. 

In creating this feature we acknowledge and build upon Kay Loughman's pioneering website, Wildlife in the North Hills, http://www.nhwildlife.net/, where a beautiful catalog of carefully identified wildland species may be found.  Kay's work is both inspiration and archive for our new feature, in which we hope to present the individual or community, the species, the context, the range where we know it, and the overall health of the plant. 

In considering these several aspects, we wish to explore what we often discover in Garber Park--Garber is vitally related to the larger biologic unity of the remaining wildland in the East Bay.  Our task as Stewards is to promote the preservation of the entire expanse by understanding and protecting our local communities.

The Garber Park Stewards

Giant Vetch, Garber's April Flower

Giant Vetch [Vicia gigantea]--native to California and thriving in Garber Park--is our "Flower of the Month" for April.

 Although it is a perennial herb, recognizable at all times by its foliage, this month the showy red blossoms of Giant Vetch command the attention of even casual passers by and distinguish it from the several other vetches (both native and exotic) that grow in the East Bay. 

   

In Garber Park, about midway on the loop trail,  a large community of Giant Vetch shares "Horsetail Meadow" with the ancientEquisetum (interestingly also called Giant Horsetail) that cover the slope by the springs.  As you approach the meadow you might think that you are viewing a Horsetail monoculture.  Look closer and you will see hundreds of Giant Vetch blossoms. 
 In about a month, this robust community will provide a good harvest of native seed. 

Giant Vetch may be found at other locations on the East Bay ridge and beyond, including Chabot, Beaconsfield, Clayton Ranch, El Cerrito, San Pablo Ridge, Las Trampas, Point Richmond, and Tilden/Wildcat.  The large community in Garber is one of many wildland treasures in our Park.  

Citizen Scientists

A great turn-out of volunteers made the 2nd Annual Garber Park Earth Day a great success and a very bad day for invasives.  Our recent plantings at the Evergreen Lane Entrance were protected from the threat of poison hemlock and Cape ivy by the team who stayed till 1:00 removing these nasty invasives.  Another group went to work at the Alvarado Rd. Entrance making a big dent in the Cape ivy infestation at that site.  Our Himalayan Blackberry Bashers were once again hard at work.  They made a HUGE dent, not just in chopping down the blackberry-they accomplished that task a couple of months ago-but in digging out the roots.  This is a tiring and difficult task, which elicited an “Awesome” from Lech when he saw the huge rootballs they had dug out.  

We had a nice break from our physical labor when Lech Naumovich, botanist and restoration consultant, guided us on a walk through the park.  The Stewards goal for the walk was to pre-survey Garber Park to help us identify areas and trees which we might test in our upcoming participation in the Sudden Oak Death (SOD) Blitz on April 30-May 1.  This we did.  

But Lech did much more than that - we are all excited about becoming "Citizen Scientists"  and ready to collect information on the condition of our trees in Garber Park.  We not only learned how to identify possible signs of SOD but we measured the size, and estimated the age, and assessing the health of the trees (page 3 of hand-out below).   We encourage you to read the hand-out, and then join us on the SOD blitz on April 30-May 1, where we will not only collect samples but will begin our survey of the arboreal resources in Garber Park.