Volunteer at Old Town Native Plant Landscape

Map: Native Plant Landscape - see the corner of Taylor and Congress

McCoy House is just south of the Native area

This just in from Kay Stewart:

CNPS San Diego will host public visitors to Old Town Native Plant Landscape on Saturday May 18, noon to 3 PM, as part of the San Diego River Park Day. The staff of San Diego Old Town State Historic Park has welcomed the work and donations of CNPS, the San Diego River Park Foundation, and theSan Diego Gothic Volunteer Alliance,  all contributors to the ongoing evolution of this little native plant park, the only site in Old Town State Historic Park that illustrates San Diego as it might have been before European contact.

Our plan is to host visitors by staffing a CNPS exhibit under the sycamores and taking visitors for ten-minute tours of the Landscape. We'd need to meet there at 11 AM to set up the CNPS table-top exhibit, and for me to walkabout with the other volunteers, so all of us will feel confident sharing the Landscape when visitors start to arrive at noon.

If the Elderberries are making fruit by then, we might also might be able to have a demo about how to clean them to prepare them for cooking. (We hope to have an elderberry pancake brunch one of these days and need to get enough fruit ahead of time, to be able to do that.)

We need up to three other volunteers, to make it work smoothly.

This is a great way to introduce the general public to CA native plants. People are at Old Town to have fun, and enjoy being in the Native Landscape under the canopy of the native trees, with useful and aromatic plants including white sage, black sage, deergrass, basket rush, and elderberry, and the never-ending cacaphony of birds chirping, trolley bells, and train hoots.

If you want to do this on May 18, noon to 3 PM, please contact me ASAP. I'd sure like to hear from you.

Kay Stewart
619-234-2668
kaytaff@sbcglobal.net