Friends of Willow Creek, in Sausalito, is celebrating 13 years of stewardship and advocacy for “creek daylighting”, which is the conversion of buried pipes that convey former streams to above-ground, vegetated channels. Daylighting creeks is a complex, expensive and uncommon undertaking, as the Friends have learned, and requires patient planning, outreach, and partnership-building over a sustained period of time. One of the reasons creeks were buried in Sausalito and mostly forgotten was to make room for buildings, streets and yards, …
Archive for category: Restoration
Campus Native Plant Gardens 2017
Friends Board member Anne Siskin has been working with head of School Tara Seekins and Maintenance Chief Alan Rothkop, as well as some WCA 3rd graders and mentor students from Marin Country Day, to design a drainage system to go with our new 2000 square foot 
hillside native plant garden. On MLK Day this year, over 80 volunteers from local business Heath Ceramics helped the Friends clear weeds from this hillside in the center of campus and plant dozens …
Willow Creek has Exceptional Water Quality for an Urban Creek – Aquatic Insects
During the holiday break, Professor Matthew Cover of Cal State Stanislaus joined Friends of the Creek, Chair, Steve Moore to sampled benthic macroinvertebrates (i.e., aquatic insects & other critters) from the stream bed on the Willow Grove site. The population of insects that live in streams indicate the level of water quality. If there is a lot of pollution or concrete channelization, the creatures that live in the stream are less pollution sensitive, like earthworms and midges. Conversely, if the …
Celebrate our 4th Annual Earth Day cleanup and planting!
Please save the date to celebrate our 4th Annual Earth Day cleanup and planting!
When: Saturday April 26, 9am to 12:30pm
Where: Willow Grove at Nevada and Bridgeway, Sausalito
How: Work with neighbors and naturalists to identify and remove nonnative blackberry, fennel, ivy, hemlock, and broom plants that crowd out natives and open space by the creek. Also plant some native plants from our school’s hoop house that were donated by Marin Headlands Native Plant Nursery.
Why: To create outdoor …
Creek Daylighting Plan Update
The plan and profile of the existing Willow Creek drainage through Sausalito is now mapped on an aerial photograph and available for review. Email me if you would like a PDF for reference. It is 5 MB and 7 pages of 11 X 17 dimension, in case you want to print it.
Creek board of directors have met with and selected Prunuske Chatham, Inc. of Sebastopol to assist in creek restoration design work between Lincoln Drive and the Bay. The …
Jiji Foundation Grant Obtained!!!!!!
The Friends of Willow Creek are honored and excited to announce our receiving an $8,000 grant to create a creek daylighting plan for the Willow Creek Watershed. Daylighting is when you remove a creek from an underground pipe and re-create its open, vegetated channel above ground. Since 2011, we have submitted numerous grant applications, including to the U.S. EPA Urban Waters Program, but we were finally successful in winning a grant from the fabulous Jiji Foundation www.jiji.org that supports community …