The hotel hillside in 2022 before the planting project. (Photo by Naomi Vinbury, 2022)
A display this spring of California poppies and yorkia in the foreground, sagebrush and coffeeberry in the background. (Photo by Nancy Mueller, 2023)
Behind the Claremont Hotel there is a hillside where a unique community of people have come together to assist in restoring the ecosystem. The hillside faces southwest and for many years has been covered by introduced exotic species (100-year old eucalyptus, Italian thistles, oat grass, and oxalis/ Bermuda buttercup); a desolate landscape compared to the native ecosystem thriving not-so-far-away in Garber Park.
A few years ago, the Claremont Canyon Conservancy approached Berkeley naturalist Glen Schneider, facilitator of the Skyline Gardens restoration project, to help connect the hotel owners to native plant expert advice. Glen recommended me, as an East Bay urban ecorestoration gardener and fellow volunteer at Skyline Gardens, and I was hired for the job.
Discussion started in November 2021 and by January 2022 giant piles of freshly chipped and steaming mulch were being delivered by local arborists, such as Limb King, Ponderosa, and Expert Tree Care, as well as yards of compost by Bee Green Landscape Supply. A team of local gardeners, Jon Backus (West Coast Wild), Rachelle Cardona, Adder Schlosser, Kiah Dennerstein (Liminal Grounds), Kevin Frederick and Curtis Hicks, joined together over two seasons to haul mulch and compost by wheelbarrow uphill to suppress the introduced exotic species.
A community of plants known as coastal scrub, which may have once inhabited the southwest hillside, were grown by Native Here, Oaktown and The Watershed nurseries, and introduced to the hillside. The plants* were clustered together with space in between for the native perennial and annual plants. As these plants grow, the magic of the specialized relationships between plants and creatures become more apparent.
The community supports a high level of biodiversity throughout the seasons from the wet season (October-February) to flower season (MarchJune) to the dry season (July-September). In time, the coastal scrub community of plants will set the stage for a coast live oak and California buckeye canopy to develop, sustaining an understory community of associated plants that form a shaded fire break on the hillside.
The process of assisting the recovery of the ecosystem from one that is damaged, degraded or destroyed, continues on the hillside and we, along with the hummingbirds, bees, and all the other creatures, look forward to a beautiful flower season this year being kicked off by the dainty clusters of pink flowering currant blossoms.
* silver bush lupine, sagebrush, sticky monkeyflower, California aster, mugwort, soap plant, buckwheat, California fuchsia, yorkia, tidy tips, cobweb thistle, bee plant, grindelia, phacelia, western lace plant, pink f lowering currant, coffeeberry, Douglas iris, yarrow, California honeysuckle
