Friends of Sausal Creek
City Public Works and County Office of Education Grow More Green

by Anne Hayes

In the San Leandro hills near the Oakland border lies the Wilmont Sweeney Education Center, a high school run by the Alameda County Office of Education for first-time juvenile offenders. One of the center's amenities is a greenhouse, which had fallen into disuse. Last spring, city and county staff developed a plan to renovate the greenhouse and use it and a nearby lathe house to grow riparian (creekside) plants using the labor and care of Wilmont Sweeney students. Oakland's Watershed Improvement Program, administered by the city Public Works Agency, has an ongoing need for riparian plants for volunteer groups such as the Friends of Sausal Creek that are carrying out restoration projects with the City's support. Greenhouse repairs were started this summer, and plant production has already begun.

The collaboration is win-win-win: students gain marketable greenhouse skills as well as participating in a hands-on environmental education program with a local focus, the County's greenhouse is used for its intended purpose, and the City gets hard-to-find riparian plants at a reduced cost. The Sausal Creek Watershed benefits too, as volunteers, students, and city and county staff collaborate to collect seeds, take cuttings, and grow hundreds of plants that will eventually be returned to the watershed to help restore native plant communities.

For more information about the Wilmont Sweeney program, call Jennifer Stanley, City of Oakland Environmental Projects Specialist, at 238-6889. To join the Friends, come to the next monthly meeting, on Wednesday, December 15, from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Dimond Library, or join our next workday, on Saturday, December 18, from 9 a.m. to noon at Dimond Park. For more information about the Friends, call Anne Hayes at 231-9566.