Los Osos, Clark Valley Organic Farm Tree Donation

Windbreak for Horse Corrals

Project Title: Clark Valley Organic Farm Tree Donation

Project Description: In 2003 Lionel approached the owners of Clark Valley Farm about planting redwood trees for windbreaks alongside their home and horse corrals.   Lionel donated the trees, and the owners planted, mulched and watered them.  Currently, in all, over 100 redwoods were planted on the site to provide privacy screens, wind breaks, and also purify runnoff in one of the property’s ponds.

OCE Work History:

2003 – trees donated

Project Status: established

Updates:

none

Cal Poly, Soccer Fields Tree Planting

Students Planting

Project Title: Cal Poly Soccer Fields Tree Planting

Description: The soccer fields have been the target of many of OneCoolEarth’s recent events, mostly due to the excellent potential of the sites for involving Cal Poly fraternities, sororities, athletes, clubs, and students in the activities.  To date, hundreds of students have helped plant, mulch, water, transplant, and start seeds for the project, bringing environmental issues and solutions right to their home campus.  Plantings have become a regular part of October’s Day of Service, and the Week of Welcome organization has assisted with freshmen and leadership volunteer groups for the past three years.  Alpha Gamma Rho, Sigma Phi Epsilon, the Materials Engineering Honors Society, and Society of Women Engineers, and numerous others have participated in making this project a success.

OCE Work History:

September 2006 – WOW Planting

September 2007 – WOW Planting

October 1, 2007 – Student Community Services Planting

October 26, 2007 – Day of Service Planting

October 24, 2008 – Day of Service Planting

November 2008 – Alpha Gamma Rho Mulching

October 25, 2009 – Day of Service Planting

April 24, 2009 – WOW Leader Service Day Planting

Sept. 2009 – WOW students return to site to maintain trees

Sept. 2010 – WOW students return again to maintain trees, replanting fatalities, mulching, watering, and weeding

Project Status: partially established, monitoring, planning

Updates:

7.6.2009 – Three years after the start of plantings at the soccer fields I walked the line and counted a grand total of 400 live trees!  – Greg

San Luis Obispo, Laguna Middle School Tree Planting

Laguna Middle School

Project Title: Laguna Middle School Tree Planting

Description: Lionel began planting at Laguna Middle School in 2002 in response to the death of several eucalyptus trees on campus.  Several more plantings have occured since, focusing on creating a barrier between Los Osos Valley Road and the school due to concerns over vehicle emissions.  With over 150 diseased and dying eucalyptus on the campus, OCE plans many more plantings to replace the doomed trees with hearty, long-lived oaks, redwoods, catalina cherries and sycamore trees, all of which have thrived in the region for millenia.  Stay tuned for more information on plantings at this site.

OCE Work History:

Fall of 2002 – original planting

Fall of 2006 – extended planting

Project Status: partially established, planting ongoing

Updates:

6.28.2009 – We stopped by and counted one cork oak, 18 live oaks, two canyon oaks, four redwoods and a western cedar doing well. – Greg

San Luis Obispo, Cuesta College Entrance Tree Planting

Cuesta College

Project Title: Cuesta College Entrance Tree Planting

Description: Earth Day of 1991 marks Lionel’s first major tree planting–in collaboration with Cuesta College, 58 oaks of several varieties were planted at the entrance of the college.  Students provided the labor, and grounds keepers have maintained the trees over the years.  Auspiciously, all of the trees have survived, some reaching heights of 20 ft. in less than that many years.  The planting project has set a precedent for OneCoolEarth’s activities in the area, modeling our goals of sustainability in its minimal requirements for upkeep, beauty, practicallity in offering shade and habitat, and its overall effect of drawing attention to native landscaping.  The original planting and its success have led to further collaborations between OCE and Cuesta: involvement of the Grassroots Gathering environmental club in later planting projects, a restoration of part of Pennington Creek with assistant from the Fish and Game Department, plantings at the Fairbanks Cross Country track, and the latest project, a grant proposal with the Morro Bay Estuary Program to restore, landscape, and install a nature path with interpretive signs along a stretch of Pennington Creek.

OCE Work History:

Earth Day of 1991 – original planting

Project Status: established

Updates:

none

Avila, Bob Jones Bike Trail Tree Planting

Bob Jones Bike Trail

Project Title: Bob Jones Bike Trail Tree Planting

Description: Lionel and Chrissy live near the Bob Jones Bike Trail and often hike and bike it. Last year it occurred to Lionel that parking lot was looking awfully desolate, and he took it upon himself to spruce it up. With the help of a few friends he planted seven redwoods and twenty-eight oaks, some from acorn and some from seedlings. Watering them by hand whenever he visited the trail, he watched them grow amazingly fast–already the two foot redwood sappling has grown taller than him! Many of the acorns grew too, verifying theories about the value of direct seeding as an effective and efficient planting method (after all, its nature’s preferred method for acorns). Unfortunately one of the trees was accidentally weed-wacked, but the caretaker is now aware of the trees’ presence and avoids them.

OCE Work History:

Fall of 2008 – original planting

Spring of 2009-present – watering

Project Status: monitoring

Updates:

none

Los Osos, Baywood Elementary School Tree Planting

Baywood Elementary

Project Title: Baywood Elementary School Tree Planting

Description: Students, parents, teachers, and Lionel collaborated in the fall of 2003 to plant the schools barren fence line with live oaks, which have now grown tall.  In the fall of 2007, Lionel returned to the site and planted five island oaks in the parking lot dividers.  Since the project began, the school has initiated a dunes restoration project on its grounds, as well as planted nearly two dozen more oaks grown from acorns collected nearby by students and parents.  OCE is currently planning to landscape the parking lot with low-maintenance, drought tolerant natives, simultaneously educating students and parents about the appropriate landscaping.

OCE Work History:

Fall of 2004 – original planting

Fall of 2007 – parking lot planted

6.25.2009 – one island oak replanted

Project Status: original planting established, monitoring parking lot planting, planning landscaping

Updates:

6.25.2009 – We stopped by to mulch and replace one dead island oak and found that the sprinkler system had been repaired.  Old oaks are jumping. – Greg

Cal Poly, Walter’s Ranch Agro-forestry

Walter's Ranch

Project Title: Walter’s Ranch Agro-forestry

Description: Walter’s Ranch is an integral parcel in Cal Poly’s land holdings and home to commercial and purebred cattle. Several students live on site to tend to the cattle. Uniquely, the site is located on a slope, and animals are fed at the top of the hill to encourage exercise and proper fattening. Narrow strips of land run up the hills between pastures. Early in 2009, Lionel worked with the Cal Poly rodeo club to plant trees on this land seeing their value in stabilizing the slope, shading the livestock, and beautifying the area. Long in the future, the acorns of the oak may provide additional forge to the cattle, as is common practice in Spain and Portugal. More trees were planted in a windbreak around the on-site residence, and around an eroding ravine along the road to the beef unit.

OCE Work History:

January/February 2009 – original planting

Project Status: monitoring

Updates:

none

Paso Robles, Virginia Peterson Elementary School Tree Planting

Virginia Peterson Elementary

Project Title: Virginia Peterson Elementary School Tree Planting

Description: During the fall of 2004, Lionel organized a tree planting event with students and teachers from the Virginia Peterson Elementary School.  Valley oaks, coast live oaks, cork oaks, sycamores, and redwoods were planted along a chain-link fence next to the school’s sports fields.  Additionally, with the help of neighbors, an empty lot between the school and adjacent residences was restored with oaks and redwoods.  Individual community members have turned out since to water, mulch and tend the plantings, and even plant more shrubs on their own.

OCE Work History:

Fall of 2004 – original planting

Project Status: established

Updates:

January 2009 – Lionel and I stopped back at the site with a friend from Montreal to check on the trees.  We found 90% well established and standing tall.  We also happened to talk to several neighbors about the project and found that they had been planting more and tending the old plantings.  – Greg

San Luis Obispo, Laguna Lake

Laguna Lake

Project Title: Laguna Lake Tree Planting

Description: Laguna lake is surrounded by a prominent park along Madonna St. and home to a Frisbee-golf course.  For Arbor Day 2005, OCE planted cypress along the paved bike path and pedestrian walkway that runs along the park’s edge.  Also, numerous trees were donated from OCE’s nursuries to the City’s Parks and Recrecreation Department and are planted throughout the park.

OCE Work History:

2005 – original planting

Project Status: established

Updates:

6.25.2009 Counted fourteen cypress and one live oak along the path, all planted four years ago. – Greg

Paso Robles, GreenWorks Plant Nursery

Project Title: GreenWorks Plant Nursery

Description: This year, thanks to a grant by the Stewardship Council and the San Luis Obispo County Community Foundation, we’re able to expand our programming and diversify our crop.  Over the 2010-2011 school year we will grow 10,000 native, edible, and appropriate landscaping plants as the students of Liberty High School’s GreenWorks class establish a financially self-sustaining, student-run native plant nursery.  Thanks to the talent, time and commitment of John Semenik, Bob Bourgault, Stacy Medeiros, and many others, we are currently developing innovative new high school curriculum.

GreenWorks Nursery Goals

• Grow 10,000 useful plants for the school and community
• Provide sustainability oriented educational curriculum in science, social studies, PE, and art for students
• Train students in job skills
• Encourage youth to enter sustainability-related fields
• Reward student workers with share of business’s income

As participants in GreenWorks, about 60 at-risk youth earn science, social studies and physical education credit over the course of the years while completing projects related to the nursery.  School work is split between conceptual development in the classroom and experiential learning in the field.

To date, students are discovering what ’sustainability’ means, in terms of economy, the community, and the environment.  So far, we’ve had guest lecturers speak about: herbs, soils types, erosion, soy products.  We’ve also gotten off of school grounds three times already, collecting seeds, identifying vegetation, touring drought tolerant landscapes, and meeting the neighbors at Oak Creek Commons.  Collaborating with the Innacee Foundation, we’ve analyzed and classified soils, collected soil samples from around Paso Robles, checked out Steinbeck vineyard and Mt. Olive Organic Farm.  While major nursery work begins this month, students have helped organize and prepare the nursery site, built with the help of the California Conservation Corp and previous GreenWorks classes.  We’ve also planned and broken ground for a worm composting bin that students will use to process all school lunch waste into fertilizer for the nursery!

Indoors, students have organized the class into a business structure, with elected leaders, marketing specialists, production managers, and technical officers.  While these roles are flexible and interchangeable to some extent, they allow students to focus on a certain aspect of the nursery work.  A mock-monetary system wherein students receive a weekly ‘paycheck’ teaches economic principles and also give students a real stake in the business, as they receive gift cards and scholarships for attendance and performance.  The students have already showed how well the system works, winning a Sustainable Business award from the Air Pollution Control District for creating a soy candle business plan.  The students are also proud of creating a constitution for the classroom, stating their purpose to learn and improve the community through service as well as laying out student rights, expectations, and consequences.  As for science, students are learning essential plant anatomy and creating a selection matrix for the plants we will grow in the nursery.

For those unfamiliar with our sponsors: The Stewardship Council is a private, nonprofit organization which aims to invest in outdoor programs that serve California’s young people.  The San Luis Obispo Community Foundation is a public trust established to assist donors in building an enduring source of charitable funds to meet the changing needs and interests of the community.  Many thanks these foundations and to the private donors who continue to make this program a reality.

OCE Work History:

Fall 2007 – Original tree donation.

Spring 2010 – Received grants to create nursery.

Project Status: ongoing

Update:

Fall 2009 – OCE has reconnected with John Semenick and the GreenWorks program and is launching the an educational collaborative with the school.  October 8th marks the beginning of the program–Lionel and John will plant a few dozen oaks along the school’s fences to provide shade, windbreaks, and attractive landscaping.  The planting also begins the restoration process of a historically graded creek-side lot behind the school.  Over the next years OCE plans to work with the school to carry out the restoration of the site, developing a native plant nursery on the premises and training students in fields related to the work.  Click below for a description of our scheduled events at the school:

Paso Robles Liberty High School Tree Planting

Paso Robles Liberty High School Oak Lesson

Paso Robles Liberty High School Propagation Lesson

Summer 2010 – Built 150′ long, 6′ high fence with CCC Summer Corp crew of 10 area high school students.  Installed six new hose bibs and a 45′ wall.

Fall 2010 – Began vermicomposting bin that we will use to create fertilizer for our crop, recycling cafeteria lunch scraps.

Winter 2010 – Planted 5000 native plants from locally collected seeds

Spring 2011 – March 8th and we have sprouts from: Lotus scoparius, yarrow, white sage, big leaf maple, various oaks, baby sage!  It’s getting warmer…  First Solar is sponsoring our first open house!