Apr 122016
 

Become a Docent of the Laguna Foundation at lagunafoundation.orgBee Mountain Pond is a wildlife habitat installation.  The plan is to provide a small water bath to the critters of the Native Plant Demonstration Garden at the City of Santa Rosa’s Waste Water Treatment Plant.  Address: 4300 Llano Road, Santa Rosa, California 95407.

Denise Cadman, a Natural Resources Specialist at the Plant, and the overseer/magical wonder of the Native Plant Garden, invited me, Tony McGuigan, of Spore Lore, and my Outdoor Classroom Wildlife Habitat Installation class (name of class is very new) to install a wildlife habitat at the Garden.

start with a visionPLAN — Bee Mountain Pond.  The mountain is a 1000 pound (1/2 ton) fieldstone landscaping boulder that holds water — a tiny mountain lake for tiny critters.  The “Path” is a swath of woodchips for walking through the garden.  the pile of subterranean smaller rocks under Bee Mountain will catch any overspill water from the Pond.  Critters under the Mountain will have water, shelter, food (tiny critters feeding on the moisture AND on critters feeding on the moisture), and cavities to raise young in — they will have habitat!

Come see the Native Plant Garden!The Before.  The Native Plant Garden looks north to the Laguna de Santa Rosa, which is swollen from rain the week before Bee Mountain Pond is installed.  In the photo, the birdhouse to the back left marks where the habitat will be installed.  Note the woodchip mulch used to keep weeds out and make walking paths.

a rain-happy Laguna“Driftwood” (river wood washed up on the beach) stored at the Plant’s woodchip pile await installation day, in a week.  The rain was so generous to soak the adobe soil and make digging easier.

birdhouse to be transplanted This birdhouse must go!  It marks the spot where Bee Mountain Pond will be installed.

violet-green swallowsA mating pair of violet-green swallows before the birdhouse is relocated across the Garden.

Tony McGuigan, Spore Lore, Habitat It And They Will Come, garden, soil, Soil Under My Nails, gardening, gardens, native plants, permaculture, wildlife garden, wildlife habitat installation, environmental education, ecological landscaping, Animal Habitat, garden, ecological, landscaping, wildlife garden, biodiversity, native plants, outdoor classroom, nonvirtual education, touch the soil!, wildlife habitat workshop, Orchard View School, Laguna Environmental Center, Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation, environmental conservation,  Stone Farm, Santa Rosa Waste Water Treatment, Denise Cadman, Bee Mountain Pond, tarweed, madia elegans, narrow-leaf milkweed, asclepias fascicularis, California aster, Aster chilensis, snowberry, smphovicarpas alba, Bee Plant, California figwort, scrophularis californica, fieldstone, landscape cloth, violet-green swallow, Preparing for Bee Mountain to be moved into position.  The half-ton rock will be placed on a mound of woodchips next to is intended resting site.  Note the layering of woodchips and tree-hole landscaping cloth; the landscaping cloth will tie together the small hill.

Tony McGuigan, Spore Lore, Habitat It And They Will Come, garden, soil, Soil Under My Nails, gardening, gardens, native plants, permaculture, wildlife garden, wildlife habitat installation, environmental education, ecological landscaping, Animal Habitat, garden, ecological, landscaping, wildlife garden, biodiversity, native plants, outdoor classroom, nonvirtual education, touch the soil!, wildlife habitat workshop, Orchard View School, Laguna Environmental Center, Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation, environmental conservation,  Stone Farm, Santa Rosa Waste Water Treatment, Denise Cadman, Bee Mountain Pond, tarweed, madia elegans, narrow-leaf milkweed, asclepias fascicularis, California aster, Aster chilensis, snowberry, smphovicarpas alba, Bee Plant, California figwort, scrophularis californica, fieldstone, landscape cloth, violet-green swallow, Here comes the rock!  Plant employees forklift and move Bee Mountain.  Thanks Richard, Tony, and David!

Mountain on top of a hillBee Mountain in place to be repositioned when help arrives — when the students get here.  The plan is to “slide” this half ton rock downslope into the habitat.  Good luck!

snowberry moved to wait in the shadeA snowberry, Symphovicarpas alba, is removed to shade while the habitat foundation is created.

Santa Rosa Waste Water Treatment, Denise Cadman, Bee Mountain Pond, tarweed, madia elegans, narrow-leaf milkweed, asclepias fascicularis, California aster, Aster chilensis, snowberry, symphovicarpas alba, Bee Plant, California figwort, scrophularis californica, fieldstone, landscape cloth   ************************************************************************************************************ Paste This!: Tony McGuigan, Spore Lore, Habitat It And They Will Come, garden, soil, Soil Under My Nails, gardening, gardens, native plants, permaculture, wildlife garden, wildlife habitat installation, environmental education, ecological landscaping, Animal Habitat, garden, ecological, landscaping, wildlife garden, biodiversity, native plants, outdoor classroom, nonvirtual education, touch the soil!, wildlife habitat workshop, Orchard View School, Laguna Environmental Center, Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation, environmental conservation,  Stone Farm, Santa Rosa Waste Water Treatment, Denise Cadman, Bee Mountain Pond, tarweed, madia elegans, narrow-leaf milkweed, asclepias fascicularis, California aster, Aster chilensis, snowberry, smphovicarpas alba, Bee Plant, California figwort, scrophularis californica, fieldstone, landscape cloth, violet-green swallow, The foundation of the habitat takes place.  Center: Topsoil has been scraped from the habitat’s base and shoved to the side (against the cardboard in the rear) for later use during planting the habitat’s newly planted native plants.  Right: Riverwood waiting to be buried in the habitat’s berm.  The soil berm will be water-loving wood filled and allow for greater diversity of soil level.  Note the California aster patches that will ultimately grow together, both in the foreground left and to the side of the habitat, behind the wheelbarrow and cardboard.

what's in a berm meets the eyeRiverwood layered to form a soil berm above it.  Moist nooks and crannies for soil lions, soil tigers, and soil bears, oh my!

All in a day's workBee Mountain Pond’s planted soil berm takes shape.  Bee Mountain will sit just on the other side of the yellow shovel.  Soil from a hole at the base of the Mountain rock will be added to the berm to increase its height.  Then, once the berm’s foundation is created with heavy adobe clay sol, the topsoil from Cardboard Dump will be called into action.  The “old” topsoil, bagged planting mix, and compost created by the Plant will be mixed as a base for the habitat’s new plantings.

Santa Rosa Waste Water Treatment, Denise Cadman, Bee Mountain Pond, tarweed, madia elegans, narrow-leaf milkweed, asclepias fascicularis, California aster, Aster chilensis, snowberry, symphovicarpas alba, Bee Plant, California figwort, scrophularis californica, fieldstone, landscape cloth   ************************************************************************************************************ Paste This!: Tony McGuigan, Spore Lore, Habitat It And They Will Come, garden, soil, Soil Under My Nails, gardening, gardens, native plants, permaculture, wildlife garden, wildlife habitat installation, environmental education, ecological landscaping, Animal Habitat, garden, ecological, landscaping, wildlife garden, biodiversity, native plants, outdoor classroom, nonvirtual education, touch the soil!, wildlife habitat workshop, Orchard View School, Laguna Environmental Center, Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation, environmental conservation,  Stone Farm, Santa Rosa Waste Water Treatment, Denise Cadman, Bee Mountain Pond, tarweed, madia elegans, narrow-leaf milkweed, asclepias fascicularis, California aster, Aster chilensis, snowberry, smphovicarpas alba, Bee Plant, California figwort, scrophularis californica, fieldstone, landscape cloth, violet-green swallow, In search of compost, we are told to go the “pile in the back corner” of the Waste Water Treatment Plant’s compost making facility.

A bucket of compost a day keeps . . . .Denise Cadman and I collect state-of-the-art-made compost at the Plant’s compost-making facility.

Bee Mountain askew!Bee Mountain is almost in place, BUT is pointing skyward, that is, 90 degrees off level.  The “peak” will be pulled right and the base will be pulled left, resulting in a level, water-holding position.

Strap down that rock!Bee Mountain has been leveled, with the rock’s shallow bowl pointing skyward.  Note the buckets of compost awaiting mixing into the planting soil.

tweeking Bee Mountain into placeTweaking Bee Mountain into place.  Metal digging bars are used for leverage.

PUSH!Bee Mountain hovers in place.  Stones are used as fulcrums for the digging bars’ leverage.

It holds water!  (for now)Bee Mountain is leveled to maximize its water-holder capacity.  Planting mix is piled up against the fieldstone boulder.

Planting out Bee Mountain PondSoil prep for planting out Bee Mountain Pond.

Plant native plants!Native plant seedlings surround Bee Mountain Pond wildlife installation.

Denise Cadman’s sketch of Bee Mountain Pond.

Tony McGuigan, Spore Lore, Habitat It And They Will Come, garden, soil, Soil Under My Nails, gardening, gardens, native plants, permaculture, wildlife garden, wildlife habitat installation, environmental education, ecological landscaping, Animal Habitat, garden, ecological, landscaping, wildlife garden, biodiversity, native plants, outdoor classroom, nonvirtual education, touch the soil!, wildlife habitat workshop, Orchard View School, Laguna Environmental Center, Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation, environmental conservation,  Stone Farm, Santa Rosa Waste Water Treatment, Denise Cadman, Bee Mountain Pond, tarweed, madia elegans, narrow-leaf milkweed, asclepias fascicularis, California aster, Aster chilensis, snowberry, smphovicarpas alba, Bee Plant, California figwort, scrophularis californica, fieldstone, landscape cloth, violet-green swallow, Common Name                                                  Scientific Name

1) tarweed                                                            Madia elegans

2) narrow-leaf milkweed                                  Asclepias fascicularis

3) California aster                                             Symphyotrichum chilense (formerly Aster chilensis)

4) snowberry                                                      Symphovicarpas alba

5) Bee Plant, California figwort                     Scrophularia californica

Sunny Galbraith (Orchard View School) and Denise Cadman (Santa Rosa Waste Water Treatment)

Sunny Galbraith (Orchard View School) and Denise Cadman add final touches and a little water to the plantings.

Bee Mountain Pond is in!Bee Mountain Pond is in!

The berm side of Bee Mount PondThe berm side of Bee Mount Pond.  Note how some wood disappears under the berm’s woodchips.

Habitat it!Bee Mountain Pond wildlife habitat installation includes a portal into the berm — all ye small critters enter here!

And we are done.  Bee Mountain Pond has been installed.  Thank you to the City of Santa Rosa, Waste Water Treatment Plant administrators and Denise Cadman for inviting me, Tony McGuigan, of Spore Lore, and Sunny Galbraith, teacher at Orchard View School, of Sebastopol, and her students, to create this wildlife habitat installation at the Plant’s Native Plant Garden.

Enjoy your wildlife habitat installations.  Habitat it!

Tony

Oct 232015
 

Outdoor Classroom project Salamander French DrainSalamander French Drain is a wildlife habitat installation installed October 8, 2015.

Salamander French Drain is a fix-it landscaping art project turned wildlife habitat installation.  This project is an Outdoor Classroom project: Orchard View School; Sunny Galbraith, teacher, and 9 of her Biology students.  Location: Laguna Environmental Center.  Date of installation project: October 8, 2015.

The Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation operates the Laguna Environmental Center, or LEC, on Stone Farm, at 900 Sanford Road, Santa Rosa, California, 95401. This wildlife habitat installation is behind the LEC’s Native Plant Nursery.

Become a Guide or Docent.       lagunafoundation.orgSalamander French Drain — The BEFORE.

Prep (before students)

Today’s installation, Salamander French Drain, is about protecting the Habitat Garden’s water feed pipe with a gravel filled swale.  Water collected in the swale will soak a pile of rocks under the nutsedge bed the students plant.   AND, there’s a wood creature involved.

3/4 sch 80 PVC inside telescoping drainpipe sectionsThe 3/4″ schedule 80 PVC water pipe that is T’d off at the hose riser (hose faucet pipe) continues underground.  Telescoping sch 40 PVC (3″ and 2″) pipes encase the water pipe to protect it from unwary shovels.  The water/pipe has come from the back of the Nursery in a straight line but a previously installed habitat, Big Splash Hotel and Spa, blocks access where we want the pipe to rise out of the ground.  So, the pipe was diverted at the hose faucet pipe; from there the pipe angles into the Habitat Garden.  A 90-degree elbow (under shovel in above pic) sends the pipe back to the pipe’s original direction, BUT around Big Splash Hotel and Spa.  Big Splash gets water AND maybe the buried water pipe will survive.  One way to help protect the buried pipe is to mark it.

stump was buried in woodchips to keep it ALIVEA wood stump is called into action — it will be a marker post.  It will mark the 90-degree turn in the buried water pipe.  The stump was buried in a woodchip pile for a few months to keep it alive, so the critters and fungus in it could thrive.  The stump goes into action as a wildlife habitat installation resource ALIVE.  The stump itself is habitat, full of microbes, fungi, insects, and crawly critters that are food for larger organisms. Big Splash Hotel and Spa (foreground) Big Splash Hotel and Spa’s hose water comes from the left, behind the landscaping boulder, and up Compost Cricket Corral‘s corner post.

gravel layer under landscape cloth and sedge plants will "french drain" the water into a rock-filled holeA gravel layer under landscape cloth and sedge plants will “French drain” the water into a rock-filled hole.  Note the grasses behind and to the right of the gravel buckets; that invasive alien Bermuda grass will be replaced with native umbrella sedge, Cyperus eragrostis, or, nutsedge.

runoff water will soak Salamander French DrainIrrigation/sprinkler runoff from the Nursery’s concrete slab will keep Salamander French Drain well watered.

grab a shovel!The hole to be filled with rocks gets deeper.  Water was used to soften the hard, dry adobe soil.  The marker stump will be positioned far right.  A second stump will sit in the hole’s middle, with large fieldstone rocks filling in the rest of the hole.  As done in Big Splash Hotel and Spa, moisture holding fieldstone will be used to create an underground moisture sink, a watering hole when all else is dry, prime real estate for moisture-loving critters, habitat!

retaining wall log face cut to slope with soil from Compost Cricket CorralRetaining wall log face cut to slope with soil from Compost Cricket Corral.

 Students at work

Outdoor Classrooms rock!Weeds in front of the compost are not pulled out, but are cut at soil level — “chop and drop” in Permaculture parlance.  The new greens will be added to the compost to feed it, nurture it.

reclaiming potting soil AND removing Bermuda grassIn prep for the nutsedge plants and seeds to be planted, one team (background) harvest discarded potting soil and another team (foreground) removes Bermuda grass thatch.

moving retaining wall log And here comes the retaining wall log that will hold the slope of soil from the compost and leave leg room in front of the bench. Two students pull the log using straps, one steers from behind.

moving the retaining wall logRetaining wall log is ready for placement.  Note how the outdoor classroom students are operating in teams with different jobs.  From left, clockwise: log placers, (back) nutsedge seed collectors, (in willow) nutsedge plant transplanter, and stump leveler.

filling trench with fieldstone rocksFieldstone rocks are placed in the landscape cloth-lined hole before tree stumps are added.  Note the black landscape cloth in the hole; it will keep soil from filling into the cavities and crevices between the fieldstone rock pile in the trench.  The maze of different-sized vaulted-ceiling chambers will become shelter for many different-sized critters.  Also, less soil in horizontally oriented pockets or holes in the rock means more water can fill in those holes.  Every subterranean fieldstone rock in the habitat installation, therefore, will become a Thousand Lakes tiny critter housing development — habitat for microbes, insects, snakes, ground spiders, gastropods, lizards, worms, and many other fauna.

leveling stumpsThe students used a 2-by-4 (2″ X 4″ wood beam) to fix the height of the stumps.  Then, each stump was leveled using a basin of water.  Simple, effective tools and know-how to dial in exact placement of the stumps that will be the sturdy base to a heavy redwood bench.

harvesting yarrow seedYarrow plants, collected from the garden resource bin (AKA “yard debris bin”) are stripped of their seed heads.  The seeds are then spread alongside the Nursery’s concrete slab to discourage water erosion.

weighing down the retaining wall with a rockA large rock is placed against the retaining wall’s slanted cut to help hold the log in place and to hide the saw cut.

nutsedge bed is readyMove over weeds, here comes native umbrella sedge (Cyperus eragrostis), or “nutsedge”.   Note the 2X4 on the right used to position the proposed bench’s foundation height.  Working in the soil — hard not to be happy!

photographer photo opPhoto op for teacher Sunny Galbraith on the compost pile.  Salamander French Drain is just left, downslope from the compost.  The full sheet of corrugated roof tin has been temporarily used to create a wall to collect topsoil from the installation site.  The tin sheet helps keep the topsoil and the compost separate.  After the major rock and adobe clay work has shaped the habitat, the loose topsoil pile will be spread back on top of the site.  Topsoil nutrients, minerals, and microbes return to their correct soil strata, the top layer.

woolly caterpillar“Back you go”, this student returns a woolly caterpillar back to the nearby willow thicket.

gathering nutsedge transplantsTransplanting nutsedge FROM the willow thicket.  Hands on, nothin’-virtual-bout-it! education.  This outdoor classroom rocks!

Salamander French Drain completed by studentsThe students have finished, class is over, Salamander French Drain is in!  Note the natural look of this work site that was a deep hole, a trench with an exposed water pipe, and piles of soil just hours earlier.  Nutsedge plants and copious nutsedge seeds cover the soil and rock crevices.  Note the log retaining wall — it serves as a step-down from the higher compost bin.  Also note the pooled water, behind the fence; tomorrow there will be less water there.  The French drain (gravel bed under the soil in the front) will soak up some of each night’s irrigation and divert that water to the buried rock pile.  “New Condos Under Redwood Bench — 246 units, multi-bedroom, all units receive fresh water nightly.  Biodiversity guaranteed.  PRICED TO SELL! [Critter Real Estate Magazine, front page, October 9, 2015]

Final Touches (after students)

final touch -- more topsoil addedThe students have blown through like a force of Nature — a wildlife habitat has been installed.  It is now that I discover the two buckets of topsoil that were set aside AND that were not used.  These two buckets were the first topsoil removed; fitting that they are the last returned.  I sprinkle the topsoil over the site.  The added nutrient-rich soil will increase the sedge bed’s chance of thriving.  Add water and this wildlife habitat is in!

Salamander French Drain wildlife habitat AND resting bench under the willow treeRedwood Bench (driftwood) has been installed, an easy bolt-down onto the sturdy level foundation stumps.  Habitat installations, L to R: Salamander French Drain, Big Splash Hotel and Spa, Compost Cricket Corral, which are connected to: Log Pile Apartments, Garter Snake Ravine, and a massive woodchip pile.  Habitat it!

Western Fence Lizard“Hey, don’t forget me!”  A western fence lizard peeks between fieldstone boulders that were not used in the habitat installation.  To store the rocks for later use, they were grouped together on the woodchip pile, thereby creating shelter for heat-loving critters like this lizard.

Great work, again, Orchard View School Biology students and Sunny.  Much appreciation to the Laguna Foundation, especially Restoration and Conservation Science Department staff Wendy Trowbridge (Director), Brent Reed (Manager), Aaron Nunez (Tech II), and Paul Weber (Tech).  And thank you, Estrella Phegan, Nursery Manager, for sharing the space.

Enjoy your outdoor classrooms and wildlife habitat gardening.

Tony