NEW PLOTS
So far this year Test Plot hosted 55 events across 17 plots that included planting days, maintenance, youth training, hands-on soil testing, a film screening, and flower peeping. New plots to break ground this spring include Runyon Canyon (pictured here, LA’s most popular wilderness park), Jefferson (a former oil drilling site in South LA), and Simi Valley (wildland-urban interface).

ELYSIAN MASTER PLAN
We’re thrilled to kickoff the Elysian Park Master Plan project as a consultant to landscape architects MVVA, in partnership with Terremoto. We’ll be infusing our design through maintenance experience and ethos into the project.

OHLONE HILLSIDE
With support from the Green Initiative Fund, beginning in May, we’re collaborating with four University of California, Berkeley student fellows, Ohlone cultural leaders, and Terremoto on a hillside transformation at the Lawrence Hall of Science. Our approach integrates biodiversity goals with intentional human presence, reestablishing ecological and cultural relationships through the cultivation of traditional Ohlone foods and medicines.

JEFFERSON TEST PLOT
Together with 10 Jefferson Youth Fellows and the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust, we’ve been working since January to design, grow, and maintain this plot. The site, a large flower-shaped design with five petals, is testing hardy species in nutrient poor soils at a former oil drilling site in South Los Angeles. Read more here. RSVP to our spring workdays 5/17 and 6/14.

LA-32 GARDEN OF THE MONTH
The Elephant Hill Test Plot was selected as April Garden of the Month by the LA-32 Neighborhood Council, which highlights green spaces in El Sereno that are doing exciting, interesting, and dynamic work. Enjoy the early morning light, along with coyotes, banded garden spiders, cooper hawks, gopher snakes, birds, bumblebees and butterflies!

RAINBOW CANYON WORKSHOPS
We’re hosting our 4th and final workshop supported by the Water Foundation and the Rose Foundation. Please join us May 16th for a Fire Conscious Landcare Workshop led with Community Nature Connection. After these workshops are complete, stay tuned for our Landscape Conceptual Plan for Rainbow Canyon where we will outline strategies to address flooding, fire resiliency, circulation, biodiveristy and community connection.

HOW TO PLANT A BLACK WALNUT WITHOUT DIGGING A HOLE

1.Learn what a black walnut tree looks like. They are all over NELA. Ask a friend or use an app.

2. Good luck finding a nursery that carries one, so search for a seedling planted by a squirrel.
3. Before brush clearance starts (usually in April) spend time weeding a perimeter around the seedling. Flag the tree. Build a visible ring. Soon the busy fire brush clearance crews will come and without your labor they would unknowingly weed whip it to death.

4. Come back each year and repeat this. Bring your friends and make new ones; show them the seedling and teach them how to “plant” a black walnut. They can take care of the seedlings when you are gone.

5. After a few years the tree is big enough to survive annual brush clearance unattended. Take a deep breath. Stare into its spiraling leaves. Collect one of its walnuts..

We “planted” almost 20 black walnut trees at Rainbow Canyon!