The end of May marks the end of the planting season for the BCLT Stewards on the Bolsa Chica Mesa.  Planting season matches the cooler, wetter season here in Southern California – late October through mid-May.  Throughout this time we normally have thousands of volunteers working twice a month alongside our Lead Stewards to plant thousands of native plants to restore the Mesa.  Covid-19 interrupted that work this year.

The shutdown happened in the middle of the planting season when he had around one-thousand plants in our Growing Space, the plant nursery where we start most of the native plants we use for restoration.  What to do?  We didn’t want to let our plants – the grasses, wildflowers, and hundreds of Southern Tar Plants, a protected species – languish on the tables, but we couldn’t bring the large groups we normal do out to help.  Plan B – we asked a handful of our experienced volunteer Stewards to help by coming out on their own to plant and weed and water.

And these amazing volunteers readily stepped up to the job.  They came when they could, some almost every day, staying for an hour, or two, or three.  They cleared new ground and dug lots of holes and planted many plants.  They weeded and watered and cared for the plants.  They planted all the remaining plants by May 4^th.

Our work continues.  Over the summer we will continue to do the work normally done on our volunteer days.  This includes starting new plants in the Growing Space as well as tending all the new plantings by hand watering and weeding.

We will clear new ground for next planting season while we wait for the time we can bring everyone who wants to help us back out to volunteer!

A Big Thanks to the following Volunteers:  Joe, Mike A., Roberta, Mike M., Jeff, Natalie, Randy, Marli, Danny, and Morgen.