Wood Chip Pile

Amphibian Amphitheatre Ravine — an Outdoor Classroom wildlife habitat installation

Dec 232015

Amphibian Amphitheatre Ravine is a wildlife habitat landscaping project, an “installation”, that capitalizes on available moisture, on capturing pond overflow. This installation is another Outdoor Classroom monthly session with Orchard View School (Sebastopol, California) students and their teacher, Sunny Galbraith. Date completed: December 17, 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 in an open grassy area behind Heron Hall and east of the pond, down slope from Science Station Shelf.

Prep (before students)

The Before. West view of Amphibian Amphitheatre (AA), a swatch of slope outlined by a down-slope berm. Amphibian Amphitheatre will contain many wildlife habitat installations. One installation, Amphibian Amphitheatre Hollow, installed last month, creates the north boundary of Amphibian Amphitheatre. Weeds had thrived in the shallow bowl of a slope, which is being kept moist by the pond overflow, and perhaps pond water weeping through the berm surrounding the pond. Those weeds and topsoil were scraped to create the down-slope berm of the Amphitheatre; since then, weeds are poking through the berm soil and mulch of dead weeds. Installing a new wildlife habitat, Amphibian Amphitheatre Ravine, will 1) provide a means to collect water in this already moist meadow, and 2) kill back weeds so that starts of native plants will thrive until established.

Weeds poking out of the berm down slope of Amphibian Amphitheatre (left).

And more weeds in the center of Amphibian Amphitheatre. Straw mulch will be added on top of these weeds to kill them back.

Irrigation flags outline where students can walk, or not. The north west corner of Amphibian Amphitheatre is off limits — we do not want to disturb last month’s work — a patch of juncus plants and Amphibian Amphitheatre Hollow.

Straw mulch is scrapped away to reuse as mulch, that is, to remulch the area once the Ravine is dug and filled with wood. A hay fork was easy to use because it did not mix soil into the straw.

Using a hay fork to dig wet adobe soil. SOMETHING LEARNED! — I discovered how much easier digging the clinging, heavy adobe mud was with a fork instead of a shovel. When tossing a fork-load, the mud flew off the fork. So much easier than having to knock or pull mud off of a shovel.

Inch by inch, slowly the hole crept (got deeper). Note the clean (little-soil) piles of straw (top of photo) and the berm’s fresh topsoil ridge.

Progress for the work day. Note how high the berm is and the sun in the deep hole. Tomorrow, perhaps a little more digging, then the students will backfill the hole with wood and soil from the berm.

Tomorrow is here! Today is Amphibian Amphitheatre Ravine’s installation day. First job — collecting juncus patens from my (Tony’s) barrel ponds for transplant into the installation. Of all the tools shown in the photo, I wound up using only the bow saw.

By the hair! Holding up enough plants to lift the root mass out of the water with one hand, while cutting through the root mass with the bow saw with the other hand.

A bundle of juncus awaits transport to the LEC. Collected rainwater was used to keep the pond juncus thriving till transplanting.

Juncus bunches ready for Amphibian Amphitheatre Ravine. Note the buckets full of water to ensure the roots are not exposed to the air.

Installation Day, and we are starting with puddles of water in mud. Yuck! But such is exactly why we have chosen this sight as an amphibian wildlife habitat — available water. There was no rain last night at the LEC (CoCoRaHS says so for 12-16-2015, at rain gauge station Santa Rosa 6.7 WSW). This precious water either seeped through the Pond berm or collected from morning moisture draining down slope. Either way, the amphibians will love it, and breathe easier.

The start of prep day 2, view from over the berm (foreground).

Woodchips dumped along the berm will 1) create a thick mulch to inhibit weeds along the berm’s edge, and 2) give the students a relative height when they skim off the top of the berm into the Ravine.

Deeper goes the Ravine. 1) Note how the hay fork (left) is in the deepest area of the Ravine. Digging was slow — the heavy wet clay was hard to get to. Therefore, a concentrated hole (versus the entire length of the berm) about 3 feet X 3 feet was dug as deep as possible. “Possible” was limited by the length of the hay fork and my not falling in the hole. Original vision: the entire length of the berm would be very deep. Reality: the 9 square foot hole attained a good depth, that is, deep enough for the students to anchor a bird perch in. 2) Note how high the berm is; much more soil than we want to be left on the finished, wannabe-natural-looking berm. Because the students will have little time to back fill the Ravine, keeping the dug-out soil close at hand will facilitate replacing that soil. 3) Note the higher, larger mud/soil pile to the right of the berm with the hay fork at its peak. The second hay fork was used to slam the digging hay fork into. Even on the hay fork, the wet mud from the deepest area of the Ravine wanted to stick to the fork; slamming one fork against the other helped clear the digging fork. 4) The large end pile of mud/soil has a 2-fold stategy — a) a depository for excess soil to be thrown back into the hole IF more soil is needed, or b) a landscaped hill, higher and wider than the berm, if the soil is not needed/used. A win-win pile of mud! 5) Tools, a tree limb, landscaping boulders, and a vent pipe await the students to arrive.

Straw to walk on lines the Ravine “steps” and holds the soil/mud pile together.

Here come the woodchips, to be dumped on the side lines, ready for the students to mulch the Ravine. Note that more mud was tossed on the large end-cap soil pile, on top of the straw layer. Digging is now complete, done, finished!

Students at work

The LEC’s Woodchip Pile Annex — habitat installation logs, limbs, stumps, and rocks have been stored in the woodchips to promote soil-friendly resources. The Orchard View students have arrived and pull from the pile to fill Amphibian Amphitheatre Ravine with wood and rock.

Students determine how the Ravine’s floor is filled with wood logs and stumps, a collaborative effort.

Bring on the wood! More homes for critters and more water-wicks for plants. Note the Bird Perch climbing up the berm to the left; it is deeply anchored in the bottom of the Ravine. Critters will seek its water wicking wood, deep in the cool cool clay.

Securing Bird Perch.

Fine tuning.

Using Bird Perch to slide a large log in place.

Large stumps in Ravine will soak up water and slowly wick it between morning fogs and seasonal rain.

Redwood Burl Basin arrives. The dense redwood root burl has a shallow bowl, perfect for trapping water.

Tony pulls the vent pipe, a section of plastic 4″ corrugated drainpipe, into service.

The bottom of the hole, at the base of Bird Perch, is vented up to the base of the berm, using the black plastic 4″ drainpipe. Nice muddy boot!

All wood logs, limbs, and stumps are in Ravine. Time to back fill — equal parts soil and woodchip. Note 3 students working skimming off the top of the berm soil. 2 students adding woodchips. 1 student leveling off the large soil pile.

Fill, fill, fill. There will be plenty of nooks and crannies for critters under the fill.

Dressing up Amphibian Amphitheatre Ravine with plants — pick a partner! FRONT LEFT — water-loving juncus between logs and below the berm. Juncus can be periodically flooded; therefore, it is classified as a semi-emergent species. RIGHT — wild creeping rye (leymus triticoides) on the berm. BACK LEFT — more mugwort (Artemisia douglasiana) is planted along Amphibian Amphitheatre Hollow.

Not only does this student have five fingers on his left hand, but also Sonoma fieldstone boulders have been grouped around Redwood Burl Basin, which covers the vent pipe.

Dripping wet juncus is planted deep. In foreground, a line of rye plants are ready for planting.

The large soil pile at the end of the berm has been used to fill in Ravine; the berm and pile are level.

Woodchip mulching around the new plantings AND cleanup. Amphibian Amphitheatre Ravine wildlife habitat installation is in!

West view, looking out to the Pond Bridge and Observation Platform.

East view.

West view, close-up.

Nice job, Orchard View! Orchard View students and teacher Sunny Galbraith scan the Laguna Environmental Center — where will next month’s wildlife habitat installation be?

Final Touches (after students)

An hour after the students left, I caught this blue bird on Bird Perch as the sun set.

And the blue bird said, “Habitat it!”

Just a few days after installation, Amphibian Amphitheatre Ravine collects rainwater. Note the pooled water up against the juncus-planted berm. Water also pools on the other side of the berm, showing how low this area is.

Close-up of Amphibian Amphitheatre Ravine Lake. Happy plants, happy soaking logs and stumps!

Much appreciation to the Laguna Foundation’s Restoration and Conservation Science Program staff Wendy Trowbridge (Director), Brent Reed (Manager), Aaron Nunez (Tech II), and Paul Weber (Tech). And thank you, the Laguna Foundation staff in general, for welcoming and nurturing this Outdoor Classroom over the years.

Thank you farmer Stuart Schroeder of Stone Farm for the tractor work.

Enjoy your outdoor classrooms and wildlife habitat gardening.

Tony

Amphibian Amphitheatre Hollow and Science Station Shelf — two Outdoor Classroom wildlife habitat installations

1- Residential Habitats -- Critters and Their Homes, 6-Outdoor Classroom, Blog No Responses »

Nov 242015

Science Station Shelf, in the foreground with its rain gauge ready to be read, was one of two wildlife habitat installations to be installed during November’s outdoor classroom Biology class at the Laguna Environmental Center. The Biology students from Orchard View School and teacher Sunny Galbraith also installed Amphibian Amphitheatre Hollow, at the edge of the straw mulch, in the background. Date of installations: November 12, 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. These wildlife habitat installations are in an open grassy area behind Heron Hall and east of the pond.

Prep (before students)

Objective Number One: Install a rain gauge. Use a large slab of wood to support the rain gauge post AND provide an underground shelter for critters. Project: Science Station Shelf.

Wendy Trowbridge, Director of the Restoration and Science Programs, wanted a rain gauge to be installed behind Heron Hall in an easily accessible place to be read daily. The rain gauge manufacturer, Productive Systems, gives specific instructions how to install the gauge. To start, the rain gauge is to be mounted on a post 20 inches above ground level AND the post is to have a 45-degree angle cut at the the top — the surface angle reduces raindrop splashback. No splashbacks! The slab of redwood pictured above will support the post while being buried in the shallow slope of soil behind Heron Hall. Critters will find their way under and use the “shelf” in the soil as shelter. Also, the wood slab will wick moisture long after the topsoil is dry. Habitat it! Note the square-like hole in the wood knothole — perfect for a post!

The original square-like hole in the redwood driftwood is fine tuned to accept the rain gauge post. Scrap metal is fashioned into a bracket to secure the post’s height through the post hole. We want the post tip 20″ above the ground + 3″ for soil/mulch to cover the wood base = 23″ of post length through the wood slab base.

Objective Number Two: Replace a thriving weed bog with a planting of native sedge and rushes. Also, install a swale/berm that will collect water for the plantings. AND, partially bury a hollow log in the swale to provide moist habitat for amphibians and other animals. Project: Amphibian Amphitheatre Hollow.

As can be seen from behind Heron Hall, most of the terrain is dry this time of year. The wet/green areas are irrigated, like around the pond (left) and behind the back wire link fence. Cow pasture is beyond the back (north) fence. The area we are concerned about for the wildlife habitat installation, Amphibian Amphitheatre, is the rich, thriving weedy area behind the picnic table (in the above photo). The moisture is most likely seepage from the pond to the west — water working its way through the soil berm that makes up the bank of the pond. This habitat installation will capitalize on that moisture.

Plants are thriving here. Too bad for us they are classified as weeds — undesirable plants. They will be replaced to make way for native plants to encourage native wildlife. Too many to pull! So, instead, the McCloud tool, (on wheelbarrow, will rake them to the side. The bulk of the greens/roots, and loose soil will be used to shape a swale on the downhill side of the gently sloping terrain. Sounds easier to do than to actually drag the McCloud and rip out the weeds!

Many weeds have been scraped from the belly of Amphibian Amphitheatre. Note the berms of built up weeds and soil to the east and north. Also note the rock pile on the western edge of the shallow bowl — that is the pond outlet (overflow pipe outlet) . The rock pile hides the 4-inch PVC pipe that allows the pond to overflow if the pond level gets to a certain height (the height of the pond outlet flow pipe at the pond’s edge). So, in a high-volume rain, this low area will receive not only rainwater from the sky and rainwater flowing down the slope of soil, but also rainwater from the pond’s overflow pipe. That is a lot of water!

It’s been a long day! Amphibian Amphitheatre is nearly scraped and shaped. The topsoil was generously scraped to more easily remove weeds and to also bulk up the berm that will surround the low area and help catch water flowing on the gentle hillside.

Bales of straw were tossed off of Stuart Schroeder’s hay wagon into Amphibian Amphitheatre. Broken up, and mulched, the loose straw will keep weeds at bay until the intended native plants can get a foothold. Also, the straw will wick moisture to the seedling native plants. Time will transform the straw into nutrients for the new native plants.

Straw used to smoother out long-established weeds.

“The Swimming Pool” — A thin layer of straw mulch interior AND a curvy thick edge on the downhill slope, made of straw “blocks”, against the weed/scraped soil berm. We kept the straw and the berm next to each other to smother out weds BUT did not mix the two material edges. We want as much of the soil on hand in the berm to receive either native plant starts or seeds.

The downslope berm of Amphibian Amphitheatre designed to flow with the gradient of the slope. The objective in the curvy edge is to simulate the slope’s high-water mark where flood debris would have created a berm over the years. Ultimately, the berm’s exact location will become hidden under a field of native sedges, rushes, grasses, and flowers. Till then, we pull weeds!

Northern, downhill, side of Amphibian Amphitheatre. Note the mix of weeds and soil in the berm and the homogenous, straw-only mulch layer. Time will tell how effective the mat of straw is to thwart weeds that where established, yet scraped into the berm. No chemicals used for all those weeds removed is a great plus. Poor native plant germination (from seed), high mortality rate of native plant transplants, and excessive maintenance will offset the enlightened non-use of chemicals — EVERYTHING has its costs. But rarely do critters get to weigh in — and my critter friends tell me that they would rather start with no chemicals.

The straw has sat on Amphibian Amphitheatre for one week, a rain has come and gone, Wendy Trowbridge has marked, via red flag, the position of Science Station Shelf. Systems are go!

Amphibian Amphitheatre Hollow has been stored under the woodchip pile (center, back) beyond Garter Snake Ravine ( left) and Log Pile Apartments (far left). The hollowed-out log has been dutifully awaiting transfer papers into a wildlife habitat installation. Today is its lucky day! Storing such wildlife habitat installation materials in an active, fungal spore-rich medium, like wood chips, increases the chances that a living log will be delivered to the wildlife habitat. Why not start with ALIVE?!

Students at work

Science Station Shelf

A student arrives in time to sledge hammer an angle bracket in place. The discarded shelving hardware is perfect to secure the rain gauge post to the redwood slab of wood. Sure beats sittin’ around the class!

Using post hole diggers to determine ground level, we measure how far to dig Science Station Shelf into the ground. The top of the post must be 20″ above the restored woodchip-covered ground.

The crew stops to listen for birds. Was that a Black Crowned Night Heron on its way back to the Laguna?

Measuring height of the top of the installed rain gauge. Perfect! Let the rain come.

Time to bury Science Station Shelf with returning topsoil, new and old woodchips. Note how the new resource, the woodchips on the tarp in the foreground, will be used directly over the wood shelf. The tarp will keep the new-look of the chips from disturbing the immediate area.

A good mud pile of the site ensures that the wood shelf will be “cemented” in place. Normally, best not to make mud, and drive oxygen out of the soil, but this shelf must be solid — scientists will be collecting rain gauge data daily. We want to ensure that they have sure footing on the shelf AND we do not want the rain gauge post to move at all. Mud is the answer!

Amphibian Amphitheatre Hollow

Pulling back the straw mulch from the inside of the berm to give us plenty of room to work. We want to get down to the soil to trench in a ten-foot hollow log, partially buried. Sedge and rush plants will grow alongside the water-wicking log and critters will have a long wood Quonset hut for shelter, for habitat.

The tree trunk section has been dropped into position for placement alongside the berm, and now rests alongside while habitat landscapers dig the trench that the wood will rest in. Shovelful by shovelful, the wildlife habitat comes into being. Note the woodchips on-hand; they will be used to dress the mugwort and sedge plantings. Note how the berm curves in the distance.

Decision time — have we dug enough? Will the wood log sit snuggly in the berm? Is there a welcoming entrance to the log’s hollow? Does the log look good in the hole? All answers = maybe! Note the displaced soil from the trench — a beautiful new resource to have for the plantings.

Yay, we are done digging. Amphibian Amphitheatre Hollow is in place.

Mudding in The Hollow. Students stand on the log to sink it into the mud cast being made for it. Easy work, if you can get it.

Shaping soil alongside the log and grading the berm.

Planting umbrella sedge (Cyperus eragrostis) starts from one of the Nursery trays; the flat of sedge starts is sitting on top of the partially buried Hollow log. The sedge will grow together tightly, providing a thick cover for critters. Also, 2 clumps (of 5 plants each) of mugwort, Artemisia douglasiana, were planted on the berm (foreground and left in photo). Critters will enjoy the mugwort seeds and the plants’ insectary nature will help keep the LEC buzzin’. How wonderful that the Laguna Foundation grew these plants on site in the Native Plant Nursery!

A student prepares to plant out a flat of juncus patens, or California grey rush. Juncus, like the nutsedge, can be periodically flooded; therefore, both plants are classified as semi-emergent species.

Everyone has a job — the plants go in quickly.

Amphibian Amphitheater Hollow gets watered in. Note the flare, a remnant from the tree trunk’s crown section, in the foreground.

Happy watered wildlife habitat.

Close-up of The Hollow’s above ground entrance. All critters welcomed! This “subway” tunnel ends at, is a way to get to, the buried, cool, damp, night-dark soil of the berm. “Thanks for stopping by. What’s for lunch? Oh, you ARE lunch!” [Hungry Snake].

Berm (left) — Amphibian Amphitheatre Hollow (center) — Amphibian Amphitheatre (right). Note the small rise/hill to the berm. Water draining downslope (from the right) or filling Amphibian Amphitheatre (from the pond overflow pipe) will pool at the base of the log up against the berm. Also note that the mugwort is given a dryer soil height than the sedge, which thrives from periodic submergence. [3 years future, during a heavy flooding rain]: A great blue heron walks the log looking for critters flooded out from under Amphibian Amphitheatre’s meadow.

Habitat landscapers were here! Juncus patens (foreground), nutsedge (surrounding The Hollow), and mugwort (in berm, ends of The Hollow). Note how heavily the bunching of juncus was mulched with woodchip and surrounding straw. While the 2-3 years that the woodchips break down, the juncus will have gained a head start on competitor weeds. Also, the mulch will gather and wick moisture to the juncus transplants to bridge dry spells. The sedge and mugwort plants are equally heavily mulched.

Done! 2 wildlife habitats installed AND the Laguna Environmental Center has a new rain gauge and outdoor thermometer. Nice job!, Sunny and your students, and long-time habitat landscaper helper, and me, Tony McGuigan.

Final Touches (after students)

Science Station Shelf

Wendy Trowbridge provided this link — the gathering place for daily country-wide rain gauge stations, which the LEC is now one of. The floating text/data box explains the blue dot — the daily data of the LEC’s station (Santa Rosa 6.7 WSW). November 24, 2015’s dot is blue because the Laguna Foundation’s Rain-Data-Scientist-of-the-Day (anonymity granted!) recorded 0.08 inches of rain that day. Rain! Glorious rain giving the LEC a good soak.

Opening the link “Go to report details” in the map (previous photo).

At the Habitat Garden

A gulf fritillary in Compost Cricket Corral.

Close-up of gulf fritillary butterfly in Compost Cricket Corral habitat.

A western fence lizard peeks out of the sitting bench in Salamander French Drain habitat.

Close-up of the lizard that was under the sitting bench. Note the contour and holes that insects carved into the wood of Salamander French Drain’s retaining wall. The wood surface itself is habitat for tiny critters, some of which might be prey of the lizards. Also note the blunt tail of the lizard — this lizard escaped a predator, leaving the predator with the broken off and wiggling tail section. The “tail drop” is called caudal autonomy. Lost a tail but granted another life!

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

Salamander French Drain — an Outdoor Classroom wildlife habitat installation

1- Residential Habitats -- Critters and Their Homes, 6-Outdoor Classroom No Responses »

Oct 232015

Salamander 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.

Salamander 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.

The 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.

A 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’s hose water comes from the left, behind the landscaping boulder, and up Compost Cricket Corral‘s corner post.

A 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.

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

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 Corral.

Students at work

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.

In 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.

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.

Retaining 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.

Fieldstone 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.

The 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.

Yarrow 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.

A large rock is placed against the retaining wall’s slanted cut to help hold the log in place and to hide the saw cut.

Move 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!

Photo 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.

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

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

The 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)

The 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!

Redwood 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!

“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