It\u2019s been three years since the crew for the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing Native Plant Nursery set up shop in Calabasas, with dozens of difficult-to-assemble metal tables, a spartan trailer and a million native seeds hand-collected from the surrounding hills. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s three years that nursery managers Jewlya (pronounced \u201cJulia\u201d) Samaniego and Jose Campos have nurtured thousands of native plants from seed, despite plenty of rattlesnakes, hordes of pot-gnawing squirrels, the vile smelling essence of cougar pee to repel the squirrels, blistering summers that required twice-a-day watering, even on weekends and holidays, and a couple winters of mud, erosion and endless rain. <\/p>\n
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Jewlya Samaniego, right, and Jose Campos, co-managers of the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing Native Plant Nursery, grew more than 5,000 native plants from seeds hand-collected from the hills around the structure. Over the next few weeks, those plants will be moved from the nursery and planted on the crossing in 10-by-10-foot grids. <\/p>\n
(Al Seib \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n
Now it\u2019s graduation day, when native plants coaxed from seedling trays to 1-gallon pots stand ready for planting on the crossing itself this month. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels like going off to college,\u201d said Samaniego, a slender mother of four whose oldest is in the throes of college planning. They\u2019re ready to go and you want them to go, she said, \u201cexcept, \u2018Wait, are you sure you\u2019re really ready?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Ready or not, the 5,000 or so plants have to go because the wildlife crossing over the 101 Freeway in Agoura Hills is ready to receive them, with its special, once lifeless soil that was brought to life with inoculations of the same microbes and mycorrhizal fungi that thrive in soil of the surrounding hills. After the soil was added this summer, workers seeded the ground with a cover crop of native plants particularly good at kick-starting that fungi: Santa Barbara milk vetch, golden yarrow, California poppy and giant wild rye.<\/p>\n
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In the late summer and early fall, many California native plants are brown and dormant, but they\u2019re still very much alive and will soon be planted on the wildlife crossing, where they\u2019ll grow and bloom come spring. Here, nursery managers Jewlya Samaniego and Jose Campos give crossing overseer Robert Rock and junior landscape designer Makala Gibson a tour of the 5,000-plus plants they\u2019ve grown from seed. <\/p>\n
(Al Seib \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n
Those seeds have sprouted and grown on the crossing these last few months, especially the milk vetch, but they\u2019ll be cut back to just a few inches this month to stress the plants and encourage the fungi to produce even more nutrients in the soil to help them out. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want to introduce salt-based chemical fertilizers, so you have to continuously rely on them,\u201d said Robert Rock, chief executive of Chicago-based Rock Design Associates and the landscape architect overseeing the $92.6-million project. \u201cWe want to rely on natural chemicals in the soil, like from our cover crop, which jump-starts that natural nutrient capacity of the soil.\u201d<\/p>\n
Samaniego and Campos have always consider their jobs to be more than just raising plants in a nursery. They had training with native plants from Antonio Sanchez, manager of the Santa Monica Mountains Native Plant Nursery<\/a>, and then Katherine Pakradouni, the first manager of the wildlife crossing nursery who collected the first million seeds on five-mile foraging hikes around the nearby hills. <\/p>\n But the emphasis on building soil microbes was new to them, Campos said, adding: \u201cI had the idea we were doing some restoration work, but this is basically restoring the land over the freeway. We\u2019re kind of rebuilding nature.\u201d<\/p>\n Rock, Samaniego, Campos and a few other associates met at the nursery Monday to load up about 30 plants from the nursery to prepare for Tuesday\u2019s planting ceremony. Samaniego, who has Indigenous Chumash<\/a> and Tataviam<\/a> ancestry, planned to wear regalia of the Tataviam people, whose historic home ranged from the San Fernando Valley to the Simi Valley as far east as Antelope Valley. Other longtime supporters of the project would get a chance to plant during the first official planting from the nursery. <\/p>\n Summer dormancy has turned the tall stalks of wand buckwheat brown and bare, except for tiny balls of pink flowers, but the plants should leaf out again in the spring. (Al Seib \/ For The Times) <\/p>\n The red, deep-throated flowers of California fuchsia typically don\u2019t appear until the late summer and early fall. These plants go dormant in the winter. (Al Seib \/ For The Times) <\/p>\n The celebration is one of several events planned this week during Urban Wildlife Week, culminating on Saturday with the 10th anniversary of P-22 Day<\/a>, a free festival from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at Griffith Park, the one-time home of L.A.\u2019s famous cougar.<\/p>\n During Monday\u2019s preparation, Diego Banda, CalTrans principal assistant resident engineer for the wildlife crossing, helped carry plants up the steep steps to the top of the crossing 75 feet above the freeway. Then he and his team helped Nadia Gonzalez of Puente Strategies, the project\u2019s media coordinator, lay down plywood boards to minimize soil compaction during the ceremony, while Rock, Samaniego, Campos and junior landscape designer Makala Gibson dug holes for the plants chosen for the ceremony: bush sunflower, California fuchsia, more Santa Barbara milk vetch, California aster and purple needle grass. <\/p>\n The nursery is growing a lot of other native plants too \u2014 white sage, toyon, buckwheats and other sages, to name several \u2014 but Rock said many of those plants are looking ragged right now after summer dormancy. \u201cIt might look like we\u2019re planting dead plants, and that\u2019s hard to explain to people,\u201d he said. The plants that were chosen for Tuesday\u2019s ceremony look greener, he said, and have more visual appeal. <\/p>\n As the plants for the ceremony were being pulled from the pickup, Rock rescued a little frog stowaway from the nursery and carried it to the top of the crossing, releasing it near a section made muddy by the temporary sprinklers. <\/p>\n 1 <\/p>\n 2 <\/p>\n 3 <\/p>\n 1. Jose Campos, co-manager of the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing nursery unloads four pots of native California asters for planting on the crossing. (Al Seib \/ For The Times) 2. Jewlya Samaniego, left, Robert Rock and Makala Gibson watch Jose Campos dig a few more holes for a planting ceremony on Oct. 21 on top of the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing. (Al Seib \/ For The Times) 3. A tiny frog that had been living at the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing nursery hitched a ride to the crossing on Oct. 20, on plants that were being brought in for planting the following day. The confused stowaway tried to hop away onto the freeway, but project overseer Robert Rock rescued the frog and released it at the top of the crossing. (Al Seib \/ For The Times) <\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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