One of the easiest ways to learn about California native plants is volunteering to get your hands dirty.
There are numerous nonprofit organizations devoted to protecting and/or restoring habitat in Southern California’s fire– or invasive-weed–ravaged hills, and they rely on volunteers to help them with a variety of chores, from seeding and potting to planting native seedlings in the field.
Basically, if an organization refers to a habitat restoration project, chances are excellent the work involves native plants — collecting native seeds, transplanting seedlings, planting those seedlings in the wild and removing invasive weeds that threaten them.
Habitat restoration is labor-intensive, time-consuming work, but it’s also a great way to get hands-on lessons from the botanists who spend their days trying to shore up our indigenous animals by rebuilding what’s been lost to wildfire, development and fast-growing non-native plants like black mustard.
Those jobs are also a way to scratch an itch to work with plants, even if you don’t have a traditional yard. Barbara Chung, for instance, has only a tiny 7-by-12-foot patio at her Santa Monica townhouse, but she still created a habitat garden with more than 100 native plants in pots that regularly hosts hummingbirds, bees and other pollinators, inspired by her volunteer work with habitat restoration organizations like TreePeople, the Santa Monica Mountains Fund Native Plant Nursery and Theodore Payne Foundation.
Volunteers from the Palos Verdes Land Conservancy work in the scenic Alta Vicente Reserve on March 23 to plant native plants as part of a habitat restoration project, and to remove invasive non-native weeds.
(Kendra Frankle / For The Times)
Her habitat work also inspired Chung to become a certified naturalist, publish a native plant fairy tale and ultimately pursue a law degree to help environmental causes. There are other less life-changing but still lovely benefits too, Chung notes, because some organizations, such as the Santa Monica Mountains Fund, give volunteers a few plants to take home after two hours of work.
Here’s a list of some of the top organizations in Southern California looking for volunteers to help with habitat restoration with native plants. But other nonprofit organizations may need help with labor-intensive projects, so if you know of a group that isn’t listed here, call them to see how to get involved. — Jeanette Marantos
