Natural Perspectives:

Vic and I spent Saturday morning in Central Park. He was leading his birding class through the park, and I was serving as a docent at Shipley Nature Center. It’s hard to believe when you see how beautiful Shipley is today, but it was just a little more than five years ago that the Friends of Shipley Nature Center set to work restoring that weed-chocked part of Huntington Central Park. What a mess it was back then.

Giant reed and castor bean had claimed the east side of the fenced-in preserve. The central area was a morass of passion vine and poison hemlock. Dead Monterey pines littered the west side. The exhibits in the building were mainly magazine cutouts and posters more relevant to East Coast ecosystems. The whole place desperately needed a makeover. This daunting task needed people with big hearts.

Fortunately, there are many such people in our area. A group of dedicated citizens formed the Friends of Shipley Nature Center in fall 2002. With the help of the Huntington Beach Tree Society and a city-funded work crew from the Orange County Conservation Corps, they set about removing the non-native weeds and planting native trees and plants. I was their first restoration coordinator, working day after day with the crews to turn the center from a weed-choked wasteland back into a viable habitat that people and wildlife would want to visit.

During the early years, corps members removed the giant reed and castor bean and made a huge dent in the passion vine and poison hemlock. The corps and I moved on, but volunteers flocked to the center the first Saturday of every month, year in and year out. Slowly the weeds disappeared and native plants appeared, not by magic, but by the dint of tireless work on the part of many, many people.

Some of the special people we have to thank for this miracle include Shirley Dettloff, Steve and Shari Engel, Nancy Harris, Marinka Horack, Fritz and Mary Ann Koepp, Tom Livengood, Juana Mueller, Jean Nagy, Phil Ridout, Denise Ruocco, Ron Schnorr, and Guy Stivers. Some volunteers have come and gone, but this core group has stayed the course, forging ahead with the work that needed doing.

Hundreds of new trees are thriving and thousands of new shrubs and herbaceous plants provide color and interest. Right now, in mid-winter, most of the black willows are still dormant, so the central area looks bare. But just give those trees another few weeks, and they’ll be full of new leaves.

Dozens of Eagle Scout projects have benefited the center as well. Thanks to Steve Ray and donations from a number of labor unions, the building underwent a total transformation a few years back with new paint, carpet, bathrooms and lighting. A number of us, notably Shari Engel, Shan Ray, Maricel Rosario, Terry Houseworth and myself, created new exhibits. A new iron gate with magnificent columns rose by the entryway.

The Friends put in a lovely demonstration garden filled with colorful native plants and built an amphitheater.

They also built a native plant nursery with tool sheds and a composting area. Shipley Nature Center is now a beautiful sight to behold.

Dettloff heads the docent program at Shipley, providing volunteers to keep the center open on weekends from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and on some summer evenings. Paid staffperson Carol Williams keeps the center open during the week. Dettloff was short-handed this past Saturday so I volunteered to host the building along with Megan, a local high school student. Megan and I had a busy day with a constant stream of visitors.

I took some time off from front desk duty to walk around the trail. I had personally planted a number of the trees there. I was pleased to see how nicely they had grown. Tiny oaks that were planted in November 2002 had taken hold and now towered above my head. Sycamores, cottonwoods, willows and black poplars that we planted in 2003 and 2004 are now more than 20 feet tall. Cottonwoods and black poplars are new species at Shipley. That’s one of the many benefits of this restoration project — it has increased the plant species diversity there.

Project areas that were planted with shrubs in those early years are mature already. However, other areas are still relatively bare, awaiting future planting projects. The nice thing about spreading the restoration out over time is that the plantings won’t all mature at once.

Habitats change with the seasons, with some plants blooming and some plants dormant at different times. Mother Nature helps out as well. The heavy rains of two years ago resulted in new redwood and willow trees sprouting on their own. Now we’re experiencing drought, and Blackbird Pond has receded to a mere mud puddle. Things are always changing in nature.

One of the new things I saw was that Shipley has been declared an official Monarch butterfly way station. A permanent way station plaque has been installed on the northwest side by an area that is planted with narrow-leaf milkweed and other plants that the butterflies love.

However, on Saturday the monarchs were fluttering mainly in the coastal sage scrub on the southeast side of the nature center. Apparently, butterflies can’t read.

I was gratified to see all of the visitors enjoying the nature center. The highlight of the morning was when a boy around 8 years old left the building, literally jumping up and down he was so excited. “This is a great place,” he said to his father. “I can hardly wait to come back.”

I feel the same way. That’s why so many people have put in so many long hours of hard work, dedication and love. It took big hearts to get this far along the path to restoration of Huntington Beach’s beloved nature center. Happy Valentine’s Day to you all.

VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and environmentalists. They can be reached at vicleipzig@aol.com.