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New Native Nursery
Later this summer, the Friends of Sausal Creek is hoping to put some native plants into a weed-filled meadow in Oakland's Joaquin Miller Park - about twenty thousand of them. If things go as planned, the seedlings and sprouts (all growing in pots) will become a new nursery that will help to supply local restoration efforts.
The group is waiting to find out if the Oakland City Council allocates $75,000 toward construction costs for the new facility. It wants to regrade and irrigate the site, and construct a 3,000-square-foot lath house for shade-loving plants, along with buildings for storage and plant propagation. In addition, it plans to put in an outdoor education area for youth groups and other folks who want to learn about native plants. The Friends have been operating a nursery in San Leandro, but the move will allow for expansion and much easier access. The new nursery site is actually in the Sausal Creek basin, and commands a magnificent view of the watershed, which runs from the hills through the flatlands of East Oakland.
"We'll be able to show people and say, 'This is what you're working toward,' " says the Friends' Stuart Richardson. Many of the plants will be used in a major restoration of Sausal Creek, which is set to get underway later this summer. Workers will remove a series of crumbling, WPA-era concrete structures from the creek itself, allowing the water to meander more freely and provide better habitat for steelhead and other aquatic creatures. Much of the undergrowth and overstory will be torn out, and replaced with willows, oaks, mugwort, dogwoods, lupine and more, including a number of plants rarely if ever grown in commercial nurseries, such as bedstraw (Galium aparine), fringe cups (Tellima grandiflora), and solanum (Solanum americanum).
Most of the seeds for the new nursery have been gathered from the remaining native plants growing in the Sausal Creek watershed. Michael Thilgen, a landscape architect and Friends volunteer, says that the growers will carefully track what works and what doesn't. "We'll be learning to grow species that haven't been grown before." Even though the nursery won't sell directly to the public, it will host education groups and, since it is in a city park, draw people's attention. Anne Hayes of the Aquatic Outreach Institute says the facility will help feed the growing interest in indigenous fauna. "People want to learn about native plants. They want access to them," she says.
Contact: Anne Hayes (510) 231-9566 O'B
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