Edgehill Mt Description
Edgehill Mt is a small, hidden gem in our park system. Local neighborhood activists began advocacy efforts in the early 1990s which ultimately led to acquisition of the property with Open Space Fund money. For the past eight years this project has been officially part of the Natural Areas Program.
The park contains mature Monterey pine and cypress trees along with plenty of invasive blue gum eucalyptus. The primary challenges here include English ivy, cape ivy, blackberry, and ehrharta grass. Remarkably, as we remove the carpets of invasives, we’ve found a strong resurgence of native scrub species from retained seed banks in the soil. We also have planted many native grasses and forbs. Indeed, the grasses have been particularly successful — so much so that Edgehill Mt was the location of the first-ever Poapalooza beginning native bunchgrass workshops held in San Francisco.
Here is the management plan.
In 2003 we placed a couple of wooden benches at the favorite view spot in remembrance of Joan Kingery, one of the key early forces behind the creation of Edgehill Mt Park.
Edgehill Mt currently has 127 volunteers who have subscribed to our regular email newsletters and work at this site. They have posted 33 photos and 15 posts to their blog.
Regular Workparty Schedule
- 2nd Saturday of each month from 13:00 to 15:00
Regular Meeting Location
- The Joan Benches -- [Map and Details]
Additional Information
Blog Posts
Here are blog posts about the Edgehill Mt project — presented 2 at a time in reverse chronological order. Browse to earlier or later posts via the pagination controls below.
February 2009
25 February 2009 - 12:44, Tinman said:
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One useful effect of the fall’s drought was the impact it has had on the ehrharta grass plague in the park. We were able to virtually mop up all the ehrharta in our primary work areas and push into the tangles of native blackberry in the lower portions of the NW slope.
The current rains have been extraordinarily well-timed, though. All of our plantings this year are doing spectacularly. The strawberry in particular appears poised to cover well along the path.
Of course, off-leash dogs remain a persistent problem. It appears that some of the neighbors along Shangri-La simply let their dogs out of their houses in order to run down to the dog latrine, er, park. From the size of the shit-piles, these are not small dogs.
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January 2009
10 January 2009 - 17:34, Tinman said:
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On an incomparably gorgeous day such as today, there is nothing finer than planting native plants in a public space — which is exactly what the Edgehill Mt Volunteers did today. We managed to install 180 plants — California fescue, California brome, California melic grass, elderberry, and mimulus — in our regular two-hour workparty.
Unfortunately, the flip side of this gorgeous weather is that the winter rains are failing us, so we also had to spend a fair bit of time watering in these new recruits.
However, even with only the occasional watering that we can manage, our success rate has been excellent. The areas we’ve been working on for the past number of years are looking spectacular! Nearly all the planted stuff is thriving, and we continue to discover new remnant populations that emerge once the weeds are reliably out of the way.
One very welcome result from the clear skies is that the ehrharta grass plague is in remission. Ehrharta does not do well at all when dry, so if climate change accomplishes nothing else, it may help eradicate ehrharta from the Bay Area.
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