Regeneration and Restoration — Abstract of Paper


Ten Years of Oak Restoration in City of Walnut Creek Open Spaces
Ralph Kraetsch¹


The Oak Habitat Restoration Project began in 1991 when several individuals recognized that the oak woodlands and savannas of Walnut Creek's nearly 2,800 acres of open spaces had little natural regeneration. This group gathered volunteers who harvested acorns, planted them, and then installed tree shelters and watered the resulting seedlings. The Project soon became a unit of the Walnut Creek Open Space Foundation, which now provides most of our equipment and materials. The Project usually has 18 activity dates each year, nearly all on Saturday mornings. We usually plant 250 to 300 sites per year. About 75 percent of the sites initially contain at least one seedling from the 3 acorns planted in each site. At the end of the first growing season about 60 percent remain. We estimate that in 4 to 5 years about 1/3 of sites have become strong saplings. We have used a number of planting and maintenance methods which, over the years, have provided us with a preferred set of procedures that others may find useful.