Met with City Workers in the Park

Met with staff to discuss maintenance

On Thursday, August 7th, I met with the staff from So Pas Dept. of Public Works and TruGreen landscape maintenance at the Nature Park to discuss park maintenance. Overall, the park looks good. The sycamore circle is really looking better than ever. There is some graffiti, especially on the sign near the circle. We decided that for now it would be best to remove the sign since it is totally covered with graffiti, both painted and scratched, and can't be cleaned up anymore.
As Jesse Barajas of Public Works put it, "The greatest asset in the Nature Park are the trees." Many of the trees pre-date dedication of this land as a Nature Park in October 2004. The trees that were planted in 2004 by MRCA (Mts and Rivers Conservation Authority)and SMMC (Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy) with money from the state, are doing well.

Western Sycamore (Platanus racemosa)

Invasive weeds are biggest challenge
The biggest challenge in the park are invasive weeds. The land before its conversion to a nature park was a degraded, illegal dumpsite. Land like this is usually overgrown with exotic, invasive weeds. MRCA cleared out a castor bean forest and removed many other aggressive weeds. They regraded the land, put in a retention basin, paths, signage, and some appropriate native plants. Many of the trees are doing well, but many of the smaller shrubs and perennials have not made it. This is not a problem, though, because the park had a very nice collection of native plants to start with.

The problem are the weeds. If we do not keep them under control, the park will revert to its earlier condition. The city has been doing much to control castor bean, milk thistle and other weeds. Right now the worst problem is the tree-of-heaven (Ailanthus altissimo) above the circle (on the east side of the park, south of the sycamore). A large specimen of this aggressive weed was removed when the park was created. The root system continues to sprout new "tree-lets". If they aren't removed then they will take over this section of the park - no joke! TruGreen will be removing this problem plant, along with tree tobacco, Chinese elm, Russian thistle, and castor bean.

Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissimo) getting a foothold in the Nature Park