About Us
We are a non-profit that is dedicated to eradicating invasive plants in an effort to restore and protect our ecosystems. Currently, we are focusing on invasive ivy, broom, and holly.
Why those three in particular?
English/Atlantic ivy is killing trees and choking out native plants on the forest floor. Scotch/French broom is taking over fields and roadsides and creating a fire risk. English holly is taking over redwood forest understory and usurping willow thickets along creeks.
Good News:
Invasive ivy and broom make good targets because they are fast growing but easy to kill.
Invasive ivy has an Achilles' heel. It propagates through its berries, which almost always have to be up high to form, such as in trees. It also takes a long time to mature, seven years or more. Birds then eat the berries and disperse the seeds. Tree ivy is easy to kill; just cut it around the base of the tree, and everything above the cut will die. Infestations of fruiting ivy with 100,000 berries or more are common, and it only takes about 20 minutes to kill such ivy.
We can greatly slow the spread of English holly by targeting the fruiting female trees (the ones with the pretty red berries).
Bad News:
Broom quickly propagates and can take over whole hillsides.
One plant can have thousands of seed pods. When they ripen, the pods explode, dispersing seeds which stay in the ground for decades.
Holly is surprisingly difficult to kill by conventional methods: it root suckers freely and cut logs can apparently re-root during the dry season on top of a ridge.
More Good News:
The good news is that broom often has shallow and easily pulled root systems; its root systems don’t become extensive until it is fairly old.
We are not deterred by holly's zombie-like survival tactics- we have pulaskis for that sort of thing. Also, fruiting holly appears to be much less prevalent than fruiting ivy- so in that sense, easier to eradicate.
We Are Needed Because:
Government agencies are for the most part ignoring invasive ivy because it's been deemed too widespread to do anything about. Because we are volunteer driven, working near our communities is a natural choice, and invasive ivy and broom are prevalent in them. Furthermore, incremental reductions can have far-reaching consequences.
Our non-profit works on both public and private land. In contrast, government entities are often limited from going on private property. Stewards of protected natural areas must continuously work to remove invasives coming from other areas. Beyond that, taking care of our ecosystems is important wherever they are.