LARPD Opens Native Grassland Seed-Processing Barn and Monarch Milkweed Nursery at Sycamore Grove Park in Livermore

Open-space rangers with the Livermore Area Recreation and Park District (LARPD) and botanists from the Alameda County Resource Conservation District inaugurated a Native Grassland Seed-Processing Barn and a 2,200-square-foot Pollinator Propagation Shadehouse on Sunday morning at the Wetmore and Arroyo Road ranger station of Sycamore Grove Park at 5035 Arroyo Road in southern Livermore. Protecting 847 acres of alluvial sycamore woodland, Arroyo Del Valle riparian corridor, and rolling savanna grasslands, Sycamore Grove Park serves as the ecological cornerstone of the southern Tri-Valley trail system.

Until this autumn, park rangers and volunteer stewardship crews had to purchase generic commercial native grass seed from out-of-county nurseries or clean hand-collected local seeds on folding tables in the maintenance garage. Inside the new 900-square-foot ventilated timber seed barn, two electric brush-deawners and a three-screen air-aspirated seed winnower powered by a 6-kilowatt rooftop solar array process up to 800 pounds of locally adapted purple needlegrass, California oatgrass, blue wildrye, and sky lupine seed each harvest season.

Adjacent to the barn, a predator-proof galvanized shadehouse with automated overhead misting tables holds 4,000 deep-root propagation tubes of narrow-leaf milkweed (Asclepias fascicularis), mulefat, and valley oak saplings. Every seedling is propagated from Sycamore Grove parent stock for winter out-planting along eroded Arroyo Del Valle stream banks.

The $235,000 native plant nursery program was approved by the LARPD Board of Directors with funding from a California Wildlife Conservation Board habitat grant and the LARPD Foundation. Volunteers can sign up for Sunday morning seed-cleaning and planting workdays on the LARPD Open Space Portal.