May 12: Rock-rolling, weed-corralling party, Schoolhouse Creek Common

Schoolhouse Creek Common during native-garden tourSchoolhouse Creek Common, the beautiful community-build park at Curtis and Virginia, urgently needs help weeding and spreading new gravel on the paths! Join them 9 AM – noon, Saturday, May 12.

Work for all, all ages welcome! Snacks and drinks provided. Bring your own work gloves if you have them.

For information contact Jamie Day, day7715@gmail.com.

UC Berkeley funding for BPFP “Greening Berkeley” partners

For the third year in a row, BPFP’s “Greening Berkeley Hands On” partnership has been awarded a Chancellor’s Community Partnership Fund grant by UC Berkeley. This year’s award of $24,000 will help BPFP affiliates carry out a wide variety of hands-on environmental projects. The grant pays for both materials and a UC student intern, who organized student volunteering through CalCorps, UC’s public-service arm.

Projects in the 2008 grant range from path construction and a solar light for the Santa Fe Right of Way, projects of Berkeley Path Wanderers, to tools and gloves for the city’s 14 public-school gardens, through Friends of School Gardens. The community-built Schoolhouse Creek Common will install chess tables and a bench. Nearby, Friends of Westbrae Commons will continue transforming the Ohlone Greenway south of Gilman with native coastal-prairie plants. Friends of Shorebird Park Nature Center will spread fresh sand and build new racks at Adventure Playground, while Aquatic Park EGRET will get upgraded nataive plants and upgraded wheelbarrows. Friends of Five Creeks will be able to install signs on local natural history and plant drought-tolerant natives in a variety of sites, from the Santa Fe Right of Way to Mortar Rock Park.

Aquatic Park EGRET also will partner with Earth Team Environmental Network, Berkeley Community Media, College of Natural Resources, and Berkeley Community Garden to involve local teens in habitat restoration days that teens also will film for showing on local cable TV. This project received a $5000 Chancellors Community Partnership grant.

Join us to carry out these projects! Contact BPFP or the affiliate group you are interested in — click on “Affiliated Groups” at right.

Schoolhouse Creek Common Workday

Schoolhouse Creek Common Update
The first weekend in January this year, the Schoolhouse Creek Common crew installed a couple of boulders that will serve as the entrance (and additional seating) to a meeting area at the east end of Schoolhouse Creek Common. The plan is to finish the project on the second Saturday in March at 10am, the usual work day (rain day the following Saturday). It should be fun, with folks passing boulders along, mixing cement, quaffing coffee and croissants, sowing wildflower seeds, and getting Schoolhouse Creek Common ready for the Native Garden Tour later in spring. We will also be installing a bulletin board. You don’t have to be a neighbor to participate. Come join the fun and see the native plants and wildflowers. Mark your calendars.
For more information, please call Jamie Day, 559-8368, day7715@sbcglobal.net.

Schoolhouse Creek Common Update

Schoolhouse Creek Common Update
The first weekend in January this year, the Schoolhouse Creek Common crew installed a couple of boulders that will serve as the entrance (and additional seating) to a meeting area at the east end of Schoolhouse Creek Common. The plan is to finish the project on the second Saturday in March at 10am, the usual work day. (rain day the following Saturday). It should be fun, with folks passing boulders along, mixing cement, quaffing coffee and croissants, sowing wildflower seeds, and getting Schoolhouse Creek Common ready for the Native Garden Tour later in spring. We will also be installing a bulletin board. You don’t have to be a neighbor to participate. Come join the fun and see the native plants and wildflowers. Mark your calendars.
For more information, please call Jamie Day, 559-8368, day7715@sbcglobal.net.

Annual update of 2007 Activities

Our annual Update highlights activities of BPFP and our affiliate groups from 2007:

From the Board introduction:

We are hopeful the energizing power of partnerships will become a theme of the 21st century. Around the world individuals are organizing in their local areas to improve their lives, and Berkeley Partners for Parks is a leader in those efforts in our community.