Our Native Plant Nursery

Building The Nursery

The Walnut Creek Open Space Foundation received a grant of $5400 from the Contra Costa County Fish and Wildlife Committee to build a native plant nursery for our restoration work. We accomplished this with the leadership of a landscape contractor friend, Don Mount, and all volunteer labor from our Tuesday group. The City of Walnut Creek gave us a small plot of land behind the Shadelands Art Center and a water connection. The project took nine months - September 2009 to June 2010 - because we had to keep up with our regular habitat restoration work as well. After a break, we had one final work day in September 2010 to assemble the shed before winter came. The following slideshow tells the story of how the nursery came together:

Current Nursery Activities

Every year we collect native seeds from the Open Space (as allowed by our City-granted permit) and propagate them in our nursery. There are six raised beds which are almost always full of various species. We spare as much time as we can in between restoration projects to pot plants, weed, and do general maintenance. We have three composting bins at different stages of decomposition to add nutrients to the soil we purchase. Many of the plants used in our restoration efforts come from this nursery.

In 2014 it became obvious that the Tuesday group couldn't keep up with the nursery in addition to the restoration work, so we started a dedicated monthly nursery group.

Inaugural workday for the new nursery group, November 2014

Expansion

Soon after this, Phil Johnson began the Fossil Hill wildflower project. Planting trays of plugs for the flowers and other things that went into this endeavor soon required more space than we had. As of 2023, we have ten beds - five for Fossil Hill and five for everything else. This necessitated removing the soil bin, moving the storage shed and compost bins, and reconfiguring a new, smaller work area.