Santa Barbara Botanic Garden and Channel Islands Restoration Host Community Open House at Elings Park Restoration Site
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Santa Barbara, Calif. March 15, 2024 – Santa Barbara Botanic Garden and Channel Islands Restoration invite the community to an open house event on Saturday, March 23, from 9 to 11 a.m. The event is open to the public and celebrates the progress of their Elings Transformation Project.
“With the community’s help, we’ve planted 1,368 individuals of 27 different native shrubs and grasses at our experimental restoration site,” says Denise Knapp, Ph.D., the Garden’s director of conservation and research. “We’re pleased with the survivorship and growth we’ve seen so far, and we look forward to studying the positive impacts on the ecosystem over time.”
What: The public is invited to learn more about how the Garden is transforming a portion of Elings Park through its experimental science, habitat restoration, and community building project. Attendees can meet the plants, learn about the different weed control techniques used, and engage in discussions with scientists about why native plants support the web of life.
https://sbbotanicgarden.org/classes-events/elings-restoration-project-open-house/
When: Saturday, March 23, 9 to 11 a.m.
Where: Elings Park Restoration Site – 1298 Las Positas Road, Santa Barbara, CA 93105
Contact: For more information or access to media visuals contact Kaylee Tu, communications coordinator at the Garden, at ktu@sbbotanicgarden.org.
About Landscape Transformation at Elings Park
The project’s one-acre location on the South Bluffs has been selected and staff and project volunteers will control the weed seed bank, then plant and monitor the native species. Earlier this spring, Garden staff began monitoring plants, birds, pollinators, and other bugs and will be following up after planting to gather additional data on the site’s vitality. Data before and after the transformation will be compared, and both will be compared to an adjacent invaded area. In 1985, Elings Park opened following a community campaign to turn the former landfill into a public park. First encompassing 90 acres, the Park expanded to 230 acres in 1994 with the purchase of an adjacent property. Currently, approximately 75% is undeveloped – much of it in the South Bluffs area addressed in this project. Over the past two years, many invasive plants have been removed from the Park’s most visited areas, and over 250 California-native oaks, plus thousands of native grasses and shrubs, have been planted. CIR is involved in these and other ongoing restoration activities at Elings Park. For more information about the landscape transformation project, please visit: https://sbbotanicgarden.org/conservation/our-impact/restoring-habitats/elings-park-transformation/